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| UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. | 



THE MODE 



OF 



MAN'S IMMORTALITY 



Or, The When, Where, and How, 



OF THE 



Future Life. 



By REV. T. A. 'GOODWIN, A.M., 

Author of the " The Perfect Man" and late Editor of " The Indiana 
Christian Advocate? 



"With what body do they come ? ** — Corinthian Doubter, 
"Thou sowest not that body that shall be." — Paul's Answer, 




f^' 



NEW YORK: 

J. B. FORD & COMPANY. 

1874. 



Entered according; to Act of Congress, in the year 1874, by 

T. A. GOODWIN, 

in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, Washington, D. C. 




DEDICATION. 



to the loved ones of life who are with the lord 

This Book is Affectionately Dedicated, 

with the confident assurance that, though un- 
seen, they are ever present, loving and beloved 
no less because they have put on immortality. 



41 Men will linger less in the Graveyard if convinced that the dead are else- 
where."— Dr. Townsend. 

" Some things that we have read and heard about raising to Immortality the 
body, the breaking up of graves, and the upsetting ot tombstones at the material 
'resurrection,' may be questioned without heresy." — Dr. Daniel Curry. 

" Some believe that these bodies shall rise again. Thank God, not I ! "—Rev. 
Henry Ward Beecher. 

"We shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is."— St. John. 



NOTICE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 



THE call for a second edition furnishes an opportu- 
nity to the author to add a few pages by way of 
enlarging upon some points, but chiefly in furnishing 
references to acknowledged scholars and teachers 
who agree with him on those most severely criti- 
cised in the first edition. This is due to a large class 
of readers who are not averse to the doctrines taught, 
but who want first to know that they are agreeable to 
those whom they are willing to follow, before avowing 
their assent. 

The most caustic criticism which the first edition 
elicited was from an intelligent class of laymen who had 
heard of late so little about the resurrection of the 
physical body that they supposed the doctrine had been 
given up by the better class of divines. Their criticism 
was that the book was not called for. Singularly enough, 
at the very time that that edition was passing through 
the press the Methodist Quarterly Review for October 
1873 was also passing through the press with an elabo- 
rate article from an eminent writer of New England to 
prove that "ike flesh shall be raised;" and numerous 
criticisms elicited from the religious press of the country 
show that there are yet persons of respectable rank 
who still cling .to that notion. So far, therefore, as that 
doctrine is mischievous and this work may remove the 
error from the Christian Church, the book is timely and 
will be useful. 

Not the least of the commendations which the first 
edition elicited have been numerous testimonials from 
those in -various walks of life who had been led to look 



vi NOTICE. 

upon death and the grave with horror. The more cheer- 
ful, hopeful, trustful, Scriptural views herein taught have 
mitigated the grief they had endured in the loss of loved 
ones, and removed from their own anticipations all dread 
of the cheerless charnel-house. The writer is quite 
content to let those criticise who delight in it, while 
such results as these follow the reading of the book by 
the millions who have no favorite creed to maintain, but 
who wish to drink of the pure waters of the river of life 
as they flow from the Word of God. That thousands 
will be made better and happier by reading these pages 
we firmly believe. None can possibly be made less 
useful or less happy. 



PREFACE. 



THIS little book will fall into the hands of some 
persons who will not read it. A glance at the 
title-page, and a discovery that the author is not of 
their rank, will be sufficient. Being great men them- 
selves, they learn nothing from common men. Besides, 
having made up their minds on the subject discussed, 
what use? 

Others, glancing hastily through it, and discovering 
that it does not interpret the Bible just as they do, will 
lay it down with very profound contempt, and probably 
denounce it as infidel. This is by far the cheapest way 
to dispose of it. It is the common resort of imbeciles 
and bigots. 

The writer once encountered a representative of this 
class in the person of a class-leader who had emigrated 
from the sand-hills of North Carolina. The shape and 
motions of the earth had been mentioned somehow in 
a sermon. Deeply grieved and piously indignant, he 
rushed to the Bible to overthrow the doctrine. "The 
earth is not round," said he, with an air of triumph. 
" See here ! ' I saw four angels standing on the four 
corners of the earth.' How can anything be round 
which has four corners ? And the earth does not swing 
upon nothing. See here ! * Thou, Lord, in the begin- 
ning hast laid the foundation of the earth.' How can 
anything swing upon nothing when it has foundations ? 
Besides that, did not Joshua command the sun to stand 
still? How could it stop if it had not been going?" 

We could not answer him, for he was ensconced 
behind the Bible, and no argument could convince him 



viii PREFACE. 

that any other interpretation than that which he gave could 
possibly be put upon those passages, without destroy- 
ing the authority of the Bible entirely. He died a firm 
believer that he was right as to the shape and motions 
of the earth, and that we had grievously departed from 
the faith as it had been delivered to the saints. 

We have met his kith y\ every walk of life. Our 
pulpits, and even the professorial chairs of our colleges, 
have not wholly escaped the tribe. To interpret the 
Bible in its most literal sense, and to adhere to the inter- 
pretation which their fathers gave, is the test of ortho- 
doxy with them. Sand-hillers, whether laymen or clergy, 
whether presiding at the plow or in the university, need 
not read this book. They will not like it if they do. 

With this inkling as to the style of the book, some 
will read it only that they may find fault. They will be 
•highly gratified, for they will find something on almost 
every page to assail. The book asks no quarter. It 
simply says, in a consciousness of its correctness : 
" Strike, but hear me." 

Some will read it without endorsing or condemning 
in advance, but, like the good Bereans, will search the 
Scriptures and exercise good common sense to see 
whether these things are so. We commend their spirit 
and judgment. If they are not the happiest class, they 
deserve to be, for they certainly are the wisest. 

The book is written under the conviction that no 
sentiment is more detrimental to the development of our 
holy Christianity than that narrow-mindedness -which 
requires its votaries to accept as final the opinions of the 
fathers as to the teachings of the Bible, or to regard the 
incidental opinions of the apostles themselves on matters 
of science, and social relations, and human governments, 
and physical laws, as above question because inspired. 

It was no more possible for the men . who were 
educated in the selfish doctrines of Judaism, modified 
by the scholarly paganism which surrounded them, to 
comprehend the scope of the religion taught by the Son 
of Mary, than it was for our Pilgrim fathers to compre- 



PREFACE. ix 

hend religious liberty, or our revolutionary fathers to 
comprehend the equal rights of man; although their 
respective formulas embraced the abstract truth. 

Seeing that even the apostles modified their views 
daily on the incidentals of their mission, both as to the 
scope and intent of the Gospel, why should any Chris- 
tian teacher insist that the perfection of wisdom and 
loyalty is found in adhering to the human dogmas of 
other days ? 

Will any one say that the Christianity of to-day is 
not of a higher and purer type than that which obtained 
when heretics were silenced by the Inquisition ; or when 
witches were burned under its sanction even in our 
own land ; or when sectarian bigotry turned the pulpit 
into a platform of polemic strife ; or when the highest 
motive to a life of purity was the dread of the lake 
of literal fire and brimstone ? The Christianity of the 
ages to come will no doubt as far outshine the Christian- 
ity of to-day as our type excels that of a century or five 
centuries ago. The world has outgrown paganism and 
every false religion because the elements of life were not 
with them, while Christianity, true to its divine origin, 
keeps abreast, or rather leads the most advanced phase 
of human progress. 

The apostles and martyrs and confessors never 
conceived of the far-reaching influence of the words 
they preached in their healthful influences upon the 
moral, intellectual, and material interests of mankind. 
It is probable that the most sanguine Christian of to-day 
is equally unable to comprehend the higher and purer 
influences of the Christianity of the ages to come, when, 
purified and uplifted by the agencies now moulding 
society, there will be more than poetry in calling the 
earth, as it then will be, " the new earth," for the former 
things will all have passed away ; but such results will 
never be attained if Christians are compelled to adhere 
to the notions of other ages simply because good men 
entertained them. 

This little book goes forth with no pretentions to 



X PREFACE. 

great research. It goes, nevertheless, without apology ; 
expecting no favor from a certain class of critics, 
and asking none. What is true and valuable in it will 
survive all criticisms; what is valueless will soon be 
winnowed out and disappear. Its aim is to do good, to 
create a higher and better standard of faith in the Bible 
and in the unseen. It will awaken some thought, pro- 
voke some discussion, strengthen the faith of some, and 
possibly do more good than some books much more 
elaborate on the same subject. 



CONTENTS. 



Chapter I. Preliminary Observations. Importance and Difficulty 
of the Subject. Heathen Notions of Immortality. Old Opin- 
ions on such Subjects not always Correct. The Bible not Scien- 
tifically Correct. Dr. B. K. Peirce. Style of Criticism to 
be Expected. Galileo and the Church. The Bible Contains 
Errors. Examples. Reliable on the Subject of Salvation. Ex- 
amples of Bible Inconsistencies i 

Chapter II. Bible true though mixed with Human Imperfections. 
Bigotry Promotive of Infidelity. Dr. B. K. Peirce. The Soul 
is the Man. Made in the Image of God. The Body only the 
House. The Meaning of " Formed." Illustrated by other Scrip- 
tures. Male and Female Spirits. The Body is the Entire 
Man, or no Part of Man. Dr. Whedon. 

Chapter III. Job's Opinions. There is no Hades or Sheol. Job 
did not Believe in a Bodily Resurrection. McClintock and 
Strong. Dr. Townsend. 

Chapter IV. The Views of Jacob, David and Samuel. 

Chapter V. The Views of Isaiah, Hosea, Ezekiel and Daniel. 

Chapter VI. Christ's Teachings with the Sadducees. By the 
Narrative of the Rich Man and Lazarus. His Conversation 
with Martha. The Transfiguration. The Dying Thief. 

Chapter VII. The Resurrection of Christ. His Material Body 
Certainly Raised. Afterwards seen only in the Spirit Form. 
Dr. Whedon. Dr. Townsend. 

Chapter VIII. Apostolic Preaching. Paul at Athens, at Antioch, 
before Agrippa, the Council, Felix, Festus, at Thessalonica. 
Peter on the Day of Pentecost, and at Other Times. 

Chapter IX. More of Christ's Teachings. All That are in Their 
Graves. Raising at the Last Day. What is the Last Day ? 
The Sea gave up the Dead, etc. 

Chapter X. Fifteenth Chapter of First Corinthians. The Occa- 
sion of the Argument. First Fruits. Quarterly Review. 
Resurrection Fundamental to Christianity. To be Unlike this 
Life. The Physical not to be Raised. 



xii CONTENTS. 

Chapter XI. The Second Coming of Christ. Apostles Referred 
to a Temporal Kingdom. They Changed their Views. Christ's 
Prediction. Paul's Opinion. Peter's Opinion. Isaiah Com- 
pared with these. John's Omission. No Stars to Fall. End 
of the World, what? The Two Men on Olivet. Eminent 
Commentators on the End of the World. What the Coming 
of Christ is. What to Change Vile Bodies. 

Chapter XII. Verbal Criticisms. The Difference Between Eger- 
sin and Anastasis. The Meaning of "By the Word of the 
Lord," and " Rise First." 

Chapter XIII. The Argument from Experience. The Faith of 
the Dying Christian Better than the Creed. Examples. Ste- 
phen, Paul, Dr. Olin, Dr. Guthrie, Dr. Cookman, Bishop Clark 
and others. 

Chapter XIV. Theories of the Resurrection Examined. Analo- 
gies, Day and Night, Spring, the Caterpillar. The Matter of 
the Body Identical with all other Matter. Bishop Ames on 
Youth and Old Age. The Process of Living and Dying. Ab- 
surd Theories. 

Chapter XV. The Relation of Food to the Body. All the Par- 
ticles of the Body Equally Precious. The Body of one Man 
may Become a Part of the Body of Another. Dr. Wythe. Dr. 
Whedon. The Sexual Organs to be Eliminated. The Love 
we have for the B»dy. The Body does not Die at Death any 
more than the Soul. Dr. Townsend. Dr. Curry. Bishop 
Butler. 

Chapter XVI. Soul Capabilities. Views of Heaven. The 
Throne of God. Mind is Spirit. Heaven not far Away. 
Bishop Clark. Dr. Whedon on Spirit. Recognitions in 
Heaven. Infants. Idiots. 

Chapter XVII. The Condition of the Wicked. Their Dreadful 
Fate. Not Annihilated. Old Opinions. Hell not a Pit — not 
far Away. Lazarus and the Rich Man. The Gulf. Saul and 
Samuel. Eternal Burnings. 

Chapter XVIII. Deprecatory Remarks. Inspiration, Hell, 
Heaven, Resurrection, Day of Judgment. Judgment now. 
Dr. Whedon's Comment. Lazarus and the Rich Man Already 
Judged. 

Chapter XIX. Concluding Remarks. Fears of Disturbing Faith. 
Decline of Pulpit Authority. Young's Views. The Notion of 
a Bodily Resurrection Declining. Object of writing the Book. 
Expressive Verses. Rev. H. W. Beecher. 



THE 



Mode of Man's Immortality, 



CHAPTER L 

Preliminary Observations — How the Bible should be In- 
terpreted. 

THE most noble impulses of our nature lead 
us to inquire into the mode of that future 
life which is implied in an affirmative answer to 
the plaintive question of Job : " If a man die, shall 
he live again ? " There have been so many sun- 
derings of earthly ties — so many whom we have 
known and loved on earth, and whom we yet 
love with unabated fervor, have passed into the 
dim beyond — not to speak of our own personal 
prospective interests in the question, that he must 
be lost to the finer sensibilities of human nature 
who does not often inquire concerning the when, 
where and how of his immortality. The question 
loses none of its interest because it is involved in 
mystery. Even though we may hope to acquire 
only an approximate notion of the reality, it is yet 
a study of great interest and importance. In vain 
do we turn to science or even to revelation for a 
full and satisfactory solution of this question. It 
may be that in some sense the Spirit reveals to 
those who fear God some idea of the future life, 



14 THE SUBJECT 

yet its realities are not visible to the eye nor 
audible to the ear, nor can the heart of man con- 
ceive of them. 

When Paul had enjoyed a special vision or 
revelation, he apologized for not communicating 
the knowledge thus derived by saying that it was 
not lawful for him to utter it, meaning, no doubt, 
that there was no opening to the human under- 
standing through which such knowledge could 
enter.* We may be enraptured with the beauties 
of the rainbow, or charmed with sweet music, yet 
we do not discourse of music to the deaf nor of 
colors to the blind, for we say it is impossible 
to make them understand ; because there is no law 
of nature by which such knowledge can be con- 
veyed to those who have no sense of seeing or 
hearing. No more can earthly language convey 
to us a knowledge of heavenly things. 

It does not follow because our views may be 
very inadequate that we, therefore, know nothing 
and should be content to know nothing about the 
future life. To know that we shall live again is 
glorious ; to aspire after even an approximate 
knowledge of the mode of that future life, and to 
seek a preparation for it, is the most noble aspira- 
tion of man. 

Whence came the idea of a future existence 
we can not tell. It has been almost universal in 
all ages. It may have been transmitted tradition- 
ally from the first pair, but more likely it origin- 
ated from the instinct of our nature which shrinks 



* Not possible. — Marginal Reading. 

" Men having no terms of speech fit to express such sublime 
ideas as the apostle was there taught to understand." — Joseph 
Benson. 

" The things which he saw and heard in paradise could not be 
expressed in human language." — MacKnight. 



DIFFICULT TO COMPREHEND. 15 

from death and annihilation. To men of our times 
the conjectures and theories of the most learned 
heathens of ancient times seem very crude and 
unsatisfactory. We know, even aside from the 
light which revelation has thrown upon the 
subject, that many, if not all, of their notions 
were false. We know that there is no river 
Styx under ground, over which the disembodied 
ghosts of the departed are ferried by a ghostly 
Charon. We know that there is no Avernus, a 
gate-way to Elysium or Tartarus, which their 
mythology had located under or within the earth. 

The progress of science, to say nothing of the 
clearer light of revelation, has long since shown 
such notions to be absurd and untenable. They 
were, nevertheless, entertained by educated and 
civilized peoples — peoples, who, in some of the 
arts and sciences of civilized life, have never been 
surpassed. May it not be that the wiser genera- 
tions of the future will regard some of our notions 
as equally absurd and untenable? There is 
nothing in analogy, or in the stability of our 
knowledge on any such subjects, which certainly 
forbids such a possibility ; for our knowledge 
on this subject is unlike the truths of geometry, 
which have been transmitted unchanged for ages. 
We teach our children, as confidently as our 
fathers taught us, that the square of the hypo- 
thenuse of a right-angled triangle is equal to the 
sum of the squares of the other two sides ; but 
who can educe from any known truths in science 
or religion any such incontrovertible proposition 
relating to the future life that he may insist 
upon enforcing his views upon others at the 
expense of social ostracism in case of unbelief? 

Is it not strange that, notwithstanding our 
discarding of the mythology of the ancients, we 



16 UNIFORM OPINIONS 

retain, tenaciously, so many of their views of 
human immortality ? In tfre conception of most 
Christians even, to die is to pass over some 
chilly river. We call it Jordan, they called it 
Styx ; we locate it in the air, they located it under 
ground. The heaven of the average Christian is 
the slightest possible improvement on the Ely- 
sium of the ancients. It is, like their Elysium, 
beyond some swelling flood, and when reached, it 
is a lovely land, abounding with rocks and hills 
and brooks and vales, and amply supplied with 
good things for the gratification of the appetite — 
nothing more nor less than the creature of 
heathen imaginations, a perpetuation of Elysium, 
though called Heaven by Christians. 

Heaven is, no doubt, something vastly better 
than all this. ' It becomes us, with all the light we 
can command, to inquire concerning it, not dis- 
carding any notion because it is ancient, nor 
blindly adopting any opinion because held by our 
fathers. The Book of God, that revelation of his 
will which we call the Bible, is our chief source of 
information on this subject, as on all others which 
relate to the origin, character, and destiny of 
man. It is to be accepted as containing the clear- 
est views of the future life that have ever been 
expressed, and such is our reverence for its au- 
thority that we assume that it as nearly makes us 
acquainted with the sublime realities of the life to 
come as can be made known with human lan- 
guage and illustrations, which are designed to re- 
veal the unknown by things known. 

But in interpreting and applying its teachings 
on this subject we are not to accept as infallible 
the opinions of men, however uniform these 
opinions may have been for ages. We do not so 
interpret its teachings on any other subject, but 



NOT ALWAYS CORRECT. 17 

modify Our interpretations and accommodate 
them to every new light, retaining all the while 
profound respect for the authority of inspiration. 
Why should the almost unanimous opinions of 
Christians on the mode of man's immortality, 
running back even until they are lost in the 
mythology of the ancients, be accepted any more 
than upon the mode of his origin and the creation 
of the heavens and the earth, and the motion 
and shape of the stars and suns around us ? 

The Bible is the Book of God. Its essential 
truths are eternal ; but, being communicated in 
detached scraps of history covering thousands of 
years, and in poetry of the peculiar oriental 
style of former generations, containing rapt pro- 
phetic visions and referring to habits, and man- 
ners, and opinions long since obsolete, it is to be 
interpreted by a knowledge of the times in which 
each part was written, and the questionable words 
of its phraseology are to be understood in the 
light of modern science and discovery.* 

That unwritten Book of God, his works, is no 
less authoritative than the written Word. Shal- 



* " It is generally written in the language of common life. Its 
human authors filled almost every position in life from the humblest 
to the most exalted. The peculiarities of the writers, their cultiva- 
tion or the lack of it, the times in which they lived, the dialect they 
used, the station they filled, are all disclosed in the various books. 
. . . They had no special knowledge above their fellows as to 
general science and history. They did not pronounce their revela- 
tion in scientific form. . . . The language was human, and 
uttered in a style to be understood by the half-enlightened people 
for whose benefit it was first declared. . . . The different 
authors expressed in their own language, and by their own illustra- 
tions, the ideas poured into their minds from on high. . . . The 
medium was imperfect, and exposes its human limitations and weak- 
nesses. . . . It is not, like the Ten Commandments, a specimen 
of divine composition." — B. K. Peirce, D.D., Word of God Opened, 
pp. 19, 21. 



18 THE STYLE OF CRITICISM 

low minds have sometimes thought the two dis- 
agreed, and bitter have been the denunciations and 
persecutions which have attempted to compel an 
acceptance of man's interpretation as the Word 
itself; but men of mind have on one point 
after another conceded that the Word is true, 
though the former interpretation was false. It 
will forever remain true that "in the beginning 
God created the heavens and the earth," although 
science has demonstrated beyond a reasonable 
doubt that that beginning may date back millions 
of years. It is still true that the sun rises and 
sets, although science long since demonstrated 
that it is stationary and that only the earth 
moves. 

So in regard to the mode of man's immortal- 
ity. While no Copernicus has discovered and 
communicated facts which demonstrate the exact 
mode of the future life, science has cast at least a 
doubt upon the commonly received opinions of 
past ages on some phases of the subject. Can the 
deductions of science be harmonized with the 
Book of God, or, rather, can such an interpreta- 
tion be placed upon that book as shall be consist- 
ent with the deductions of science, so far as these 
are applicable to the subject? Let us see. We 
speak as unto wise men, judge ye what we say. 

We pause just a moment here to say that we 
are not unapprised of a method of criticism which 
we must encounter in this discussion. We an- 
nounce that in this discussion we shall assume, 
and we hope to prove, that the Bible nowhere 
teaches the doctrine of a resurrection of the 
material body, but labors everywhere to teach 
otherwise, and that science and reason, so far as 
they can be made applicable to the subject, utter- 
ly oppose such a theory. 



TO BE EXPECTED. 19 

This will be deemed by many who regard 
themselves reasonable men as utterly insuffera- 
ble. We are admonished of this by the style of 
criticism usually adopted in such a case. Only a 
short time ago, an obscure but respectable author 
put forth a book upon this subject, taking sub- 
stantially the view above announced. It fell into 
the hands of a reviewer who speaks of it in the 
following imperious style : " When a writer 
claims that his individual comment on the Word 
is the Word itself, in contradistinction to the near- 
ly unanimous exposition of the great body of 
acknowledged standards, he shows an arrogance 
that nearly forfeits a right to our attention. 
Especially insufferable is this when the doctrine, 
like the bodily resurrection, is one to which all 
Christendom, whether Greek, Roman, or Prot- 
estant, has given its unanimous assent in the 
most pronounced terms." — Methodist Quarterly, 
1872. p. 668. 

This was received by a certain class of minds 
as conclusively answering the book by one stroke 
of the pen editorial, whereas the argument, if such 
it may be called, is identical in spirit, and almost 
in words, with that used by the Inquisition in 1633 
against Galileo, and by which the Copernican 
theory of the sidereal movements was not over- 
thrown. That imperious body, claiming to be set 
for the defense of the faith as it had been deliv- 
ered unto the saints, pronounced the deductions 
of science as they related to astronomy, " irre- 
concilable with the letter of the Scripture ; . . . 
absurd, false in philosophy and contrary to the 
holy Scriptures." Galileo, having by his " arro- 
gance " forfeited all claims to the respect of the 
Inquisition, was cast into prison until he should 
recant ; but the world moved notwithstanding ; 



20 THOUGH A REVELATION, IT 

and that Inquisition passed to a future of shame 
and everlasting contempt, while the imprisoned 
Galileo lives in honor. The Inquisition had the 
argument of antiquity on its side. The church, 
Greek, Roman, and Protestant, had given its 
" unanimous assent" for ages to the former opin- 
ions of the earth's shape and position. Which is 
the more arrogant, putting forth reasons for a new 
interpretation, or attempting to silence investi- 
gation by invoking antiquity, or civil or ecclesi- 
astic ostracism ? 

Another preliminary remark : Receiving the 
Bible with the most profound reverence, as a 
revelation from God concerning himself and con- 
veying his will concerning us, written by holy 
men who wrote as they, were moved by the Holy 
Ghost, we nevertheless believe that it contains 
statements and opinions which are not essential 
to the central idea, but which, partaking of the tra- 
ditions and popular notions of the times, answered 
as scaffoldings for the truth, though not true 
themselves. The Bible is not to be received as a 
revised code, with every irrelevant word and 
phrase eliminated, and the remote truths nicely 
adjusted. It stands as it was written by kings 
and by captives, by shepherds .nd by mechanics, 
on the throne and in the prison ; now history, 
now poetry, now cursing, now praising, often 
stating the most important truths and seldom 
arguing any point ; every portion partaking of the 
spirit of the age in which it was written — ages 
separated by thousands of years. To eliminate 
these irrelevant portions and to see God in his 
real character is the object of Biblical research 
and study. To allow the Bible student to set 
aside as surplusage, or as indicating the human 
instrumentality through which divine truth was 



CONTAINS HUMAN IMPERFECTIONS. 21 

transmitted, such phrases as were the mere poetic 
adornments of the times, or such statements as 
included the legends and opinions of the times in 
which they were written — though these statements 
may be in the form of historic facts, while not 
facts at all — gives authority to the truth ; while to 
assume that the spirit of inspiration dictated not 
only the truth, but the evident human imperfec- 
tions which are mixed with it, drives thousands 
into unconditional unbelief, who would gladly 
cling to that which is true and important. 

To illustrate : It is not difficult to believe that 
the Son of God lifted the chronic paralytic from 
his bed at the pool of Bethesda, and sent him 
away happy and whole ; but when required to be- 
lieve also that curative properties were imparted 
to the waters of that pool by the periodic visits 
of an angel, so powerful and peculiar that any 
manner of disease could be cured by bathing in 
the water thus medicated, and that only one 
patient could go at a time — for there was virtue 
enough for only one, and he the strongest and 
most active of all — this staggers the faith of 
thinking men, and thousands, thus repelled, have 
turned away from the truth, and have rejected 
the whole story as an unfounded fabrication, be- 
coming sooner or later unbelievers in Bible 
teachings altogether. 

We can understand how the writer came to 
record as a fact this legend of the times. There 
was a great multitude of impotent people at the 
pool, and they were brought there because of 
their belief that at times the waters received 
medical properties through the agency of an an- 
gel. It was not necessary for the purposes of 
inspiration that the writer should make known 
that this national belief, which had grown in him 



23 THE FLOOD OF NOAH 

with his growth from childhood, was an un- 
founded legend, hence it is 'introduced as a fact, 
though only a legend. 

Claiming that such a story must be true be- 
cause the writer was inspired, and that if this be 
not true no confidence can be placed in any por- 
tion of the Bible, weakens the respect which all 
men should cherish for the history of the wonder- 
ful life of the Son of God, and which most men 
devoutly desire to cherish. 

We remark, in passing, that if such passages 
may not be eliminated from the sacred truths 
contained in the Bible, as interpolations or 
unfounded legends, then the Bible is a doomed 
book, and all its precious truths, with the 
undying hopes they inspire, are soon to be 
lost to the world ; and it is cowardly and offen- 
sive for any intelligent man to say that if 
such liberties are taken with the Bible its au- 
thority as a revelation is lost. Intelligent men 
accept the Bible intelligently, not blindly.* 

Take another example. Nothing is more dis- 
tinctly stated as a fact than that the waters of 

* " This legend is here neither endorsed nor denied, but merely 
given to account for the invalid's presence." — Strong s Harmony, 
page 66. 

" The evangelist does not seem to do anything more than state the 
popular legend as he found it." — McClintock and Strong \r Encyclo- 
pedia, page 777. 

" The verse which speaks of the angel troubling the^ water is 
wanting in the most ancient manuscripts." — De Fressense, Life of 
Christ, page 265. 

" The pool was an intermittent fountain." — Beecher's Life of Christ. 

" I prefer, with the best English writers, to omit the whole pas- 
sage."— Dr. Schaff. 

" According to the Jewish popular conception there was a per- 
sonal angel which produced the moving of the waters. John found 
this conception, and admitted it to his narrative." — Lange's Notes. 

" The best Biblical scholars decide thatthisverse was not writ. ex 
by John." — Whedoris Notes. 



A LOCAL EVENT. 23 

the deluge covered " all the high hills that were 
under the whole heaven." For ages this was 
accepted by "all Christendom, Greek, Roman 
and Protestant," as stating a literal fact, and 
questioners of its truth were handed over to the 
ranks of infidelity without ceremony, for to 
deny it was to deny inspiration; and it was 
claimed that without that faith in the inspira- 
tion of the Bible which would receive all state- 
ments of fact as fact, the Bible could no longer 
be a book of authority. 

But how is it now among men of learning 
and piety ? We know of no modern scholar of 
respectability who claims any such interpreta- 
tion for it. McClintock and Strong, whose fidelity 
to inspiration has never been questioned, say : 
" We are compelled to adopt the opinion that 
the flood of Noah was a local event, confined to 
one part of the earth's surface " (vol. 2, p. 739). 
This language is specially significant. " We are 
compelled!" It was after a lengthy and exhaust- 
ive discussion of the scientific objections to the 
"uniform opinion" of darker ages. If science, 
that modifier of creeds, that ruthless encroacher 
upon old notions, can compel the abandonment of 
old opinions on such a statement of physical fact, 
why should it be counted " insufferable " to call in 
question the old interpretations of the Scriptures 
which relate to the mode of man's immortality? 

Again : Matthew writes as a historic fact that 
some prophet had written that Christ should be 
called a Nazarene, whereas not a word of that 
kind can be found in the writings of any of the 
prophets which have come down to us. Vol- 
umes have been written to reconcile the statement 
with the fact, but there it stands, unreconciled 
and unreconcilable, yet easily explained by as- 



24 THE MISSION OE THE APO STIES 

suming that Matthew quoted from memory a 
tradition which was current among his people. 
Such explanations of these discrepancies com- 
mend ' the truthfulness of the record a thousand- 
fold more than the ingenious and improbable 
conjectures which will be found in the theo- 
logical speculations of the dark ages. 

What is true as to statements of fact is not 
less true as to opinions. The disciples were en- 
trusted with but one work. Their commission 
was to preach the Gospel to every creature. 
What this implied they had not the remotest 
idea until after the revelations of the day of Pen- 
tecost. Only one thought, up to that time, 
seemed to occupy their minds. Their hopes of 
temporal power throngh a restoration of the 
nationality of their people, and the occupying of 
the throne of David by the wonderful personage 
whom they had called Master until his unex- 
pected and ignominious death, were revived by 
the several appearances of the Saviour after his 
resurrection, but nothing more. There was noth- 
ing in his exposition of the Scriptnres concerning 
himself — nothing in his declaration that such a 
death was necessary that redemption and the 
remission of sins might be preached ; nothing in 
his final commission, " Go into all the world and 
preach my gospel to every creature," which 
lifted them above their notions and hopes ol the 
temporal advantages which were to be inaugu- 
rated by the Messiah. At the very last moment 
of the very last interview which they ever had 
with the Saviour, we find them inquiring solicit- 
ously concerning this temporal kingdom : " Wilt 
thou, at this time, restore the kingdom of Israel?" 

It required the induement of that spiritual 
baptism to open their minds to a comprehen- 



TO PREACH REDEMPTION. 25 

sion of the spiritual character of the mission of 
Jesus. Now, and perhaps almost unconsciously, 
certainly unpremeditatedly, they begin to preach 
redemption and the forgiveness of sins. Peter's 
first sermon is a model of simplicity, and he 
was no doubt as much surprised at its effects 
upon those who heard on the day of Pentecost 
as he was afterwards when he saw the house of 
Cornelius converted under the rehearsal of the 
same simple story of Christ crucified. Hence- 
forth there is a wonderful sameness in the theme 
of their discourses and the method of handling 
it : " Redemption through his blood and the for- 
giveness of sins." On this one subject — the only 
one committed to them — their views are uniform 
and consistent to the end, and we accept those 
views as embracing the mind of the Spirit upon 
the method of man's redemption. This is cer- 
tainly God's method of saving the sinner. 

But, because we accept their views of re- 
demption so confidingly, and without a question, 
must we therefore assume that all which they 
believed, or taught, or wrote, is above question? 
They had views of social life and views of po- 
litical rights which were the outgrowth of the 
times in which they lived ; and their national 
hopes and loves could not be obliterated by such 
a spiritual baptism as they had received. It is 
not strange, therefore, that there should occur 
occasional out-croppings of these in their dis- 
courses and letters. The thoughtful Bible stu- 
dent eliminates these opinions as local or tran- 
sitory, without losing faith in the central idea 
which they were inspired to understand and 
to communicate to others — the doctrine of sal- 
vation by faith in the name of Christ. The 
moral and spiritual doctrines of the Bible are 



26 APOSTOLIC OPINIONS 

uniform, and to our faith unquestionably true, 
while the incidental opinions of even inspired 
men may be as untrustworthy as their state- 
ments of philosophy or of science. 

Thus, when Paul urges obedience to the 
powers that be, and denounces resistance to 
them in such terrible accents, we may admit 
the wisdom of such sentiments as applicable to 
those to whom they were written, but we deny 
in toto their applicability to our revolutionary 
fathers, or to any others who resist tyranny 
and oppression. If Paul spoke by authority in 
the second verse of the thirteenth chapter of 
Romans, every one of our revolutionary fathers 
has long since suffered the pains of perdition. 

It is mere trifling to say that he meant that 
it was a damnable sin to resist a good govern- 
ment, for he says nothing about good or bad 
government, but he was in fact writing in be- 
half of as bad a government as ever existed — ■ 
one which, only a few years later, lighted the 
streets of Rome with the burning bodies of 
Christians. This is a human opinion, interjected 
into Paul's greatest epistle, of merely local and 
prudential application, and it is the business of 
Scriptural exegesis to eliminate such from the 
important and general teachings of the Word 
of God. 

Again, who but an incorrigible fossil believes 
that the authority of inspiration attaches to 
what Paul wrote about the silence and subjec- 
tion of women? Received in its most obvious 
meaning, it forbids their preaching and praying in 
public so unmistakably that some of the largest 
and most educated denominations of Christians 
have not yet recovered from the prejudices and 
absurdities transmitted from the Papal church ; • 



OF LOCAL APPLLCATLON. 27 

and they yet so religiously adhere to the au- 
thority of Scripture, as they allege, that they 
will not tolerate the public preaching or pray- 
ing of women. And they are right, if all of 
Paul's opinions are equally binding upon Chris- 
tians. By the exercise of good common sense, 
by comparing Scripture with Scripture, and by 
making allowance for the age in which this 
was written, and the people to whom it was 
written, and the occasion for which it was 
written, other Christians find no such an inhibi- 
tion. In this way all Scripture should be inter- 
preted and applied. 

If, then, in these items of opinion Paul was 
speaking only from his national prejudice and 
narrow views of the scope of Christianity, may 
it not be that other opinions held by him, out- 
side of the specialty of his life, were equally 
erroneous? In this discussion we shall assume 
that at one period of his life he did entertain 
such erroneous notions. To what extent and 
for what intent we may take this liberty will 
appear hereafter. If the reader is not willing 
to allow this, he need read no farther. 

One more preliminary remark : If in the dis- 
cussion of this subject we shall appeal to the 
Bible as authority and yet reject some of 
its most positive teachings as the literal con- 
struction of the words would imply, we must 
not be counted a sinner above all others, nor 
as impeaching our own witness upon which we 
rely for light upon the subject under discus- 
sion. There are many passages of Scripture 
which will not bear a literal interpretation. It 
should not be counted strange if some of these 
be found relating to so obscure a subject as the 
mode of man's immortality, and it can be no 



28 EXAMPLES OF SCRIPTURE 

answer to our argument that, in some in- 
stances, we do not accept the grammatical con- 
struction of the words, if we keep within the 
general teachings of inspiration and of reason 
on the subject under discussion. 

To illustrate : David says, " The wicked go 
astray as soon as they are born, speaking lies." 
Whatever that means, it is not literally true. 
Again, Jeremiah says : " They have sown wheat 
but shall reap thorns." That was a physical 
impossibility in Jeremiah's days, just as it is 
now. " This is my body, this is my blood," 
never was true, and never can be. Wine is not 
blood; and the Papist who teaches transub- 
stantiation from this text, whose authenticity 
has never been questioned, only insists upon 
the same method of interpretation that some 
of like spirit would force upon the reader of 
the Bible on other texts. Does any sane man 
insist upon a literal acceptance of this passage : 
" Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man 
and drink his blood ye have no life in 
you " ? Yet it is in connection with this doc- 
trine, so repugnant to our senses, that the pro- 
mise to raise man up at the last day is found, 
which is a chief, if not the most direct and 
positive proof of a resurrection of the material 
body. 

If we cannot accept the first clause of John 
vi., 54, in its literal sense, why must we be- 
lieve the latter : " Whoso eateth my flesh and 
drinketh my blood hath eternal life, and I will 
raise him up at the last day" ? Both are at 
war alike with experience and human reason. 
Again, it is written : " Every one that believeth 
on the Son, I will raise him up at the last 
day." (John vi., 40.) This is a proof-text of a 



NOT LITERALLY INTERPRETED. 29 

general resurrection of the material bodies of 
men, yet only a few verses from this we have : 
" He that believeth on me, out of his belly 
shall flow rivers of living water." (John vii., 
38.) Shall we accept this in its literal sense, 
too? It predicates upon faith in the Son, a 
physical absurdity and impossibility not one 
whit greater than that of a restoration to im- 
mortal life of the dust which once composed 
the bodies of men. We know the former is not 
literally true, why should we insist on the latter? 
To oppose scientific objections to a bodily 
resurrection is no worse than to oppose the 
same to this latter text. 

Dare any Christian to interpret literally the 
language of Christ : " I came not to send peace 
upon earth, but a sword "? Yet not one text 
can be found in the whole Bible half so point- 
edly declaring the doctrine of a general resur- 
rection of dead bodies at the end of the world. 

The injunction to wash one another's feet 
was received in its literal sense by the early 
church. The Church of England carried out 
the letter of the command in early times, and 
there are not wanting sects to-day who insist 
upon it as a religious rite. " Greet one another 
with a holy kiss" is as much an inspired injunc- 
tion as is Paul's anathema against the sin of 
rebellion, and as much inspired as some of his 
opinions relating to the end of the world; yet 
why should those who do not kiss each other 
on meeting charge us with a want of reverence 
for the Bible in eliminating such passages as 
evidently refer only to times and customs and 
opinions long since exploded? 

Taken in its literal sense, the Bible is not 
only a compilation of most absurd injunctions, 



30 HOW TO INTERPRET. 

but it contains numerous contradictions. " I 
and my Father are one" is a direct contradic- 
tion of the text: "My Father is greater than I." 
"No man hath seen God at any time" is wholly 
irreconcilable with: "He that hath seen me 
hath seen the Father." 

There is a rational and satisfactory method 
of disposing of these textual inconsistencies, 
which not only relieves them of their offensive- 
ness, but brings them into harmony with each 
other and with other Scriptures, and makes them 
tributary to the great truths intended to be 
taught by God's Word. It is a puerile question 
which is sometimes asked with an air of won- 
derful concern : "If I may not believe this or 
that passage in the most literal sense, then 
what may I believe?" We answer, we cannot 
tell what you can believe. We believe the whole 
Bible, as interpreted by reason and common 
sense, and by the Bible itself. If, because you 
cannot believe, for instance, John vii., 38, in its 
most obvious meaning, therefore you cannot be- 
lieve anything, — you are much to be pitied. 
You are, however, in the large company of infi- 
dels which dogmatism has made for ages. 

The learned Bradford K. Peirce writes: "The 
literal meaning is to be given to all words unless 
it will cause them to express what is inconsistent 
with universal experience as to the nature of 
things, or with the declared opinion of the sa- 
cred writers in other passages. When the literal 
meaning asserts that which is known to be im- 
possible, it must be given up." Paul writes: 
"The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life." 



CHAPTER IL 

The Bible True, though Mixed with Human Errors. The 
Bible-Account of the Origin of Man. The Spirit is the 
Man. 

WE have indicated in the foregoing chapter 
the spirit in which we appeal to the 
Sacred Scriptures for light upon the mode of 
man's immortality. In our heart of heart we 
cherish a most profound reverence for the 
things revealed, which are able to make those 
wise unto salvation who receive the truth in 
the love of it; and we shall not be driven from 
our confiding trust in the Word, as thousands 
have been, by that narrow bigotry which more 
than insinuates that unless we accept this Word 
as wholly unalloyed by traces of human imper- 
fections we cannot receive it at all. Gold is 
none the less gold because it is often found im- 
bedded in flinty quartz, or mixed promiscuously 
in the sands under foot. To separate it from the 
one or the other is often a work which requires 
both patience and skill; and, because of this, 
many an adventurer has prospected only super- 
ficially, and retired disgusted and disappointed, 
bearing false reports of the mines ; just as many 
a superficial reader of the Bible has denounced 
it as a jumble of meaningless contradictions, be- 
cause he would not exercise the patience and 
research which are required to look into this 



32 EFFECTS OF BIGOTRY. 

" perfect law of liberty." This has been one 
fruitful source of infidelity. 

On the other hand, the most virulent type 
of infidelity has found its origin and chief nur- 
ture in that narrow-mindedness which requires 
from all an acceptance of everything found in 
the Bible as equally inspired, and of equal au- 
thority, and all to be construed and accepted 
according to some formula of the creeds or not 
to be accepted at all. More than once this 
style of enforcing the truth has well nigh driv- 
en from the Christian standard the cultivated 
men of the age, as it did in the earlier stages 
of astronomical and geological discoveries and 
deductions; for astronomy and geology were at 
first tabooed as infidel. 

It was the absurd dogmas of the Roman 
Church which made Gibbon and Hume and 
such men the unbelievers they were. Later 
dogmas of Protestantism, in one form or anoth- 
er, have in like manner driven from the com- 
munion of the church many valuable men, 
because, with little less persistence than Rome 
herself, we have insisted upon our interpreta- 
tion of the Bible being accepted as the only 
safe passport to heaven. As our good Pilgrim 
Fathers fled from England to avoid persecution, 
yet became the most intolerant of persecutors, 
so, many narrow-minded bigots are found in 
the ranks of Protestantism who lack only the 
power to become first-class inquisitors. 

The happy mean lies between these two ex- 
tremes. There are golden nuggets of truth in 
God's word to be had for the searching; and 
we should encourage every man to examine 
carefully the things that are written, before de- 
nouncing them as untrue; while, on the other 



BIBLE VIEWS OF MAN, 33 

hand, we should extend the most cordial greet- 
ings to those who may not be able to deduce 
from the mine of truth just the same formula 
of faith that we receive, while the heart trusts 
in our Saviour, and the life is regulated by the 
precepts of the Bible. 



In the discussion of this subject from a 
Bible stand-point, we call attention first to the 
remarkable uniformity with which the Script- 
ures speak of the spirit or soul as being the 
man himself. There are, indeed, many refer- 
ences to the soul and to the body as only a 
part of the man, in deference to the prevailing 
opinions of the times and as a convenient form 
of speech; but in no case, except in Matthew's 
account of one of Christ's discourses (x., 18) are 
soul and body coupled together as constituting 
man, while in Luke's account of the same dis- 
course this phrase is omitted (Luke xii., 5) ; thus 
at least neutralizing whatever argument might 
be adduced from Matthew, proving the duality 
of man. 

But if the complete nature of man can be 
proven by this process, we set Paul against Mat- 
thew, and prove that he is triune, and composed 
of spirit, soul and body (1 Thess., v., 23), and we 
set Mark and Luke against both Paul and Mat- 
thew, and prove that he is composed of " heart, 
understanding, soul and strength" (Mark xii., 33), 
or " heart, soul, mind and strength " (Mark xii., 
30; Luke x., 27), each of which leaves the body 
out of the composition, altogether — unless the 
word " strength " may be taken as referring to it. 



34 DR. B. K. PEIRCE. 

It furnishes a rational solution to these seem- 
ing discrepancies to say, in the language of Dr. B. 
K. Peirce : " The Scriptural writers did not pro- 
nounce their revelation in scientific form" {Word 
of God opened, p. 20). Paul wrote to the Thes- 
salonians using the Greek philosophy of man, 
while Matthew used the Roman anthropology, 
neither pretending to teach the exact nature of 
man. 

The most usual language concerning man 
speaks of soul and body, spirit and body, outer- 
man and inner-man, or, in modern language, 
matter and mind. To this division we shall con- 
fine ourself as being both rational and Scriptural, 
leaving it to those whose tastes seek nicer dis- 
tinctions to build him of as many parts as they 
choose ; two, three, four, or five, for they have 
equal Scripture for all. 

We repeat that there is great significance in 
the oft-recurrence of such language of inspiration 
as attributes to the soul or spirit, or the immortal 
part, all the qualities of a complete personality, 
the ego, the / myself, of our existence. To our 
mind the account of creation, as given by Moses, 
finds its most rational interpretation in a recog- 
nition of this truth : that man exists, independent 
of the body, an entire and complete man. We 
will not speak dogmatically, but we ask the same 
method of interpretation which the acknowledged 
facts of astronomy have forced upon the other 
statements of this record. It is no greater a de- 
parture from the opinions of the fathers than that 
which is now uniformly allowed among educated 
men as to the creation of the earth, and the sun, 
and the stars. The assertion m&y be assailed as 
a new departure, and no demonstrations of phys- 
ical science may suggest or corroborate it as in 



MOSAIC ACCOUNT. 35 

the departures which astronomy and geology 
compelled, yet we suggest it as beautifully har- 
monizing with the other doctrines of the Bible, 
especially those which relate to the mode of 
man's immortality ; and as relieving a seeming 
contradiction of the inspired historians. 

The record of man's creation is as explicit as 
it is short and beautiful. It reads thus : " And 
God said, " Let us make man in our image after 
our likeness : and let them have dominion over 
the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the air, 
and over the cattle and over all the earth, and 
over every creeping thing that creepeth upon 
the earth ; so God created man in His own image, 
in the image of God created He him, male and 
female created He them." 

This is a complete history of the creation of 
man. It includes not only the fact but the mo- 
tive and the manner of his creation. He is 
created in the image of God, that he may have 
dominion over a part of the works of God. " A 
little lower than the angels, crowned with glory 
and set over the works of His hand " was David's 
notion of his relative rank and dignity. He was, 
when created, according to Moses, " in the image 
of God : " he shall be, in his immortality, accord- 
ing to Christ, " as the angels of God." 

This image and likeness represented God, not 
as the photograph represents the person. It was 
not merely a picture of God, but it represented 
God as Christ himself represented the Father. 

Paul calls man " the image and glory of God," 
and he says of Christ that he is " the image of 
God," "the express image of His person," "the 
image of the invisible God." Hence, in Avhatever 
sense Christ represented the Father, being like 
him, in that sense and no less does Paul teach 



36 MAN CREATED 

that man was made in the image and likeness 
of God, unless good reason can be shown why 
one image of God differs from another image 
of the same being, or why Paul uses identical 
language to represent essentially different things. 

That phase of infidelity which professes to 
accept the Bible as of divine authority, yet emas- 
culates it by omissions and interpolations to suit 
theories of possibilities, has tampered with even 
this essential truth, and sought to make the 
word conform to its notion, by interpolating in 
the text such phrases as : " in righteousness and 
true holiness," "in moral nature," "in moral 
character." It is like the work of the same in- 
fidelity upon the beautiful and significant prayer 
of the apostle : " That you may be filled with 
all the fullness of God." It does not quadrate 
with the infidel theories of God and of man 
that all the fullness of God may be imparted to 
man, hence there is injected into this significant 
expression the word " communicable," to make 
God's word conform to infidel notions of pos- 
sibilities, and make it read: "that ye may be 
filled with all the communicable fullness of God." 
Give us rather the truth as it is written, and let 
us have it in its divine fullness, whether we 
can comprehend it or not. 

" In the image of God created He him " is 
the unchangeable truth. One drop of water is 
not the ocean, yet it is like the ocean in every 
respect but its magnitude. Man is not God, but 
he is like God in every respect but His infini- 
tude. God is a Spirit. The creed says: "without 
body or parts;" but the Bible, which ranks the 
creed, says nothing of the kind. It speaks of 
God's face, and hands, and heart, and feet, and 
eyes, and ears. But that pious infidelity which 



I AT THE IMAGE OF GOD. 37 

dares not reject the Bible, yet will not believe 
it because with our bodily senses and earthly 
experiences we can not comprehend how there 
can be a hand that is not material, or a foot 
that is not physical, or an eye whose lenses are 
not like ours, gravely and impiously explains 
away the truth which it cannot comprehend, 
and teaches that God has no body because He 
is not material, and no parts because He is a 
Spirit, and yet, forsooth, they discourse occa- 
sionally of a spiritual body which they expect 
to wear by and by. With them this spiritual 
body is conceivable, because, in their theory, the 
matter which composes their limbs and eyes will 
be used in some way to make a spiritual body 
of, while God, not having had an anterior mate- 
rial existence, can have no body or parts, having 
had no body to be changed from matter to spirit. 

The history of man's creation might have 
closed with the 27th verse of the first chapter 
of Genesis, and have been complete. It does 
close there, and is complete. When Moses 
wrote : " In the beginning God created the 
Heaven and the Earth," he closed one complete 
chapter or epoch of creation. When he wrote : 
" And God said let there be light, and there was 
light," he closed another complete chapter or 
epoch of creation. So, also, when he wrote : 
" So God created man in His own image ; in the 
image of God created He him, male and female 
created He them," he closed another complete 
chapter or epoch of creation. 

How far back that beginning was, the mind of 
man cannot conceive. We talk of millions of 
ages, but we know nothing of what is implied 
by such a phrase. The child looks upward and 
sees a blue vault which it calls the sky, but there 



38 THE HISTORY COMPLETE 

is no vault, no sky there. It is only the limit of 
the human vision. Thus we may go backward 
in our thoughts, yet beyond the line which ter- 
minates our conceptions the beginning was, and 
God was still beyond that. 

Geology is not yet, and probably never will 
be, an exact science, but its teachings are so uni- 
form and conclusive that no man of average 
intelligence any longer disputes so much of its 
teachings as fixes the beginning alluded to by 
Moses in the very remote ages, measured by 
millions of years ; albeit there were men less 
than half a century ago, in high ecclesiastical 
position, who answered the doctrine much in the 
spirit, and almost identically in the language, of 
the inquisition of the seventeenth, century. It 
was contrary to the uniform opinions of the 
church in all ages and repugnant to the word of 
God. 

It is as deducible from the text that the pre- 
sent order of things followed immediately upon 
the event recorded in the first verse of the first 
chapter of Genesis — that the sun, moon and stars 
were not made until the fourth day, and were 
then hung around that immense body which we 
call the earth, as servants and ornaments to this 
great centre of all creation, as that the subse- 
quent history of man followed instantly upon that 
which is recorded in the 27th verse. For any- 
thing which may be deduced by analogy or 
learned from the record to the contrary, illimita- 
ble ages may have intervened also between the 
creation of man and the beginning of the history 
of our race as given by Moses. The statement 
of his creation, like that of the creation of the 
earth, arid the light, and the stars, is concise, 
comprehensive and complete. While we do not 



IN THE FIRST CHAPTER. 39 

insist that it need date one hour, or one second, 
anterior to the embodiment of man, there is 
every reason, from the record and from analogy, 
to believe that through all these ages man exist- 
ed in the likeness of God, a spirit, as the angels of 
God, and discharged the special duties for which 
he was created. 

Geological research has unearthed no fossil 
remains of the pre-Adamic man, for he was not 
material in his nature. He had no " form" made 
of clay to perish or to be preserved, but it does 
not follow, therefore, that he did not exist. 
There were fishes in the sea, and fowls in the air, 
and cattle in the field, through all those ages of 
preparation; why may not the man who was 
created to have dominion over them have lived 
also? It will certainly not be claimed by any 
modern scholar thrl beasts, and birds, and fishes, 
and vegetation, were for the first time created at 
the beginning of the Adamic period, although for 
untold ages, and, indeed, until within a half cen- 
tury, that was the " unanimous opinion " of all 
who received the Bible account as authentic. 

The earth had teemed -with animal life long 
before the time of Adam, and death had done its 
work upon the successive generations which had 
been, while vegetation had flourished as it never 
has flourished since. 

In the fullness of time, after the numberless 
geological changes which deposited gold here, 
and coal there, and granite yonder, by processes 
which we but imperfectly understand, the Infinite 
chose to make a form for man of the gross ma- 
terial which belongs to earth, and thus for a 
season to ally him to the earth as he never had 
been allied before. The account of this transac- 
tion is found in the 7th verse of the second chap- 



40 MADE A FORM OF 

ter, and reads thus : " And the Lord God formed 
man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into 
his nostrils the breath of life, and he became a 
living soul/' not a compound of soul and body, 
as the heathen supposed, and as some Christians 
who derive their notions more from the classics 
than from the Bible yet believe. Everywhere 
in the Bible this " form," this earthy body, is 
spoken of and treated as being something outside 
and distinct from the man. Paul calls it the 
earthly house of this tabernacle — a mere tem- 
porary abode for the man which inhabits it. The 
phrase, " And the Lord God formed man of the 
dust of the ground," can mean nothing but that 
he made a form for man of earthy matter. 

It may not be amiss to notice that the He- 
brew verb which is rendered formed, in the 7th 
verse relating to man and in the 19th verse re- 
lating to the lower animals, never occurs in the 
Bible in the sense of create, or to make out of 
nothing, which is the primary and almost exclu- 
sive meaning of the verbs used in the 26th and 
27th verses of the first chapter, and in the first 
and second verses of *fhe fifth chapter. Its usual 
meaning throughout the Bible is to fashion, or to 
frame, or to form something out of that which 
had a prior existence. Thus, Psalms xciv., 9: 
" He that formed the eye " ; xciv., 20 : " That fram- 
eth mischief"; Isaiah xliv., 9: "Make a graven 
image"; Isaiah xliv., 12: " Fashioneth it with a 
hammer." It sometimes has a widely different 
meaning, as in Isaiah xi., 1,3 : " Judah shall not vex 
Ephraim," and in Psalm xx., 28 : " Mercy and 
truth preserve the king ;" and in Isaiah xlix., 8 : 
" I have helped thee." A very significant use of 
the substantive form of the word is found in 
Psalm ciii., 14: "For he knoweth our frame, he 



THE DUST OF THE EARTH. 41 

remembereth that we are dust," alluding to the 
fact of framing man of dust — making a frame for 
man, as we might well say. 

But, at best, such a philological argument is 
unsatisfactory, and it is introduced here merely 
as cumulative or corroborative, not as conclusive 
or material. The best method of reaching the 
meaning of such obscure passages is to compare 
them with that Scripture whose meaning is well 
known and obvious. To our mind it is plain that 
the meaning is that he made a form, a frame, a 
body, for man, of the dust of the earth ; in other 
words, he clothed man with an earthy body, or 
an earthy garment, or an earthy frame. 

We must bear in mind that in every ac- 
count given of the creation of man, it is always 
stated that he was created in the likeness of God. 
This statement, found in the first chapter, is 
signally emphasized in the fifth. " In the day 
that God created man, in the likeness of God made 
he him." Nothing like this is found when refer- 
ring to the forming of man, the making of a form 
or frame for man. This forming or framing was 
identical in nature with the forming of the beasts 
of the field, out of the ground, as noted in 19th 
verse, and all chemical and philosophical tests 
demonstrate that the flesh and bones of man are 
identical in every constituent element with its 
kindred flesh and bones, that of animals, made 
like his " out of the ground." Of each it may be 
said, " dust thou art, and to dust returnest." 

Turning to other Scriptures we find a beauti- 
ful and conclusive exposition of this account of 
the forming of man. Paul speaks in 2 Cor. iv., 
1, 4, of the body as an earthly house, a taber- 
nacle which may be dissolved without destroy- 
ing, or in any way affecting, his personal iden- 



42 THE SUBSEQUENT SCRIPTURES 

tity, but only enabling the real man to enter at 
once into the heavenly house. He maintains the 
same idea, Phil, i., 22 : " If I live in the flesh," 
and again in the 24th verse : " To abide in the 
flesh," while he calls dying a departure of him- 
self from this fleshly abode to be with Christ. 
He means the same thing in Gal. ii., 20 : " The 
life which I now live in the flesh" The man, 
Paul, lives in the flesh, and he expects to live out 
of it when he departs from it. 

The same doctrine is unmistakably taught by 
Peter. He says (2 Peter xiv.) : " As long as / 
am in this tabernacle." The ego, the man him- 
self, lived in a tabernacle, a temporary tent, 
nothing more. He then speaks of death as " put- 
ting off my tabernacle"' — something which be- 
longs to me, but not any part of me. He puts it 
off as a man puts off a garment. Again, like 
Paul, he calls the present life, "living in the 
flesh " (1 Peter iv., 2) living in a tabernacle of 
flesh. This habitual style of speech cannot be 
accidental or without significance. 

There can be no mistaking the meaning of 
Paul when he says : " I knew a man caught up," 
but whether in body or out of the body, he could 
not tell. With him the man was still a man, 
though out of the body. He says nothing of the 
ghost or spirit of the man, as constituting only a 
part of the man, but speaks of the man him- 
self. 

Much less significant, yet not wholly irrele- 
vant is the language of Job : " Thou hast clothed 
me with skin and flesh and fenced me with bones 
and sinews." (Job x., 11.) 

If, therefore, Paul and Peter were correct in 
regarding the body as a mere tabernacle, which 
would only be "put off" at death, a house in 



THUS REGARD THE BODY. 43 

which they lived, and from which the)^ would 
" depart " when done with it ; if Job was cor- 
rect in regarding his body as his clothing, the 
conclusion is irresistible that the forming of man, 
the framing of man, was but the making of this 
tabernacle, the making of this clothing, the mak- 
ing of this frame, which is of dust, (Ps. ciii., 14,) 
and that this material organism is no part of 
the man. 

This exposition of the Mosaic account of 
man's early life will, however, not be accepted 
by those who have, by any process, come to 
believe that the after-life will be so unlike the 
present life that there will be no father or 
mother in heaven, no son or daughter, no hus- 
band or wife, no brother or sister, because it has 
been revealed that there will be no conjugal re- 
lations there. They are almost willing to forego 
the fond anticipations of such recognition as nine- 
ty-nine-hundredths of Christians entertain, rather 
than to believe that man could have existed in a 
pre-Adamic state as male and female. Why they 
might not they cannot tell, except that there can 
not be sexual distinctions in the spirit life. Let 
those who entertain so cheerless a view of the life 
to come entertain it if they can ; the millions of 
believers expect to recognize the loved of life as 
they knew them here. If they may, then pre- 
Adamic man in the spirit form of the Father 
may have existed as God created man, male and 
female ; for, " in the day that God created man, in 
the likeness of God made He him, male and female 
created He them, and blessed them, and called 
their name Adam (the man) in the day when they 
were created." This covers the whole act of 
creating. They were created in the likeness of 
God in the day — at the time — that they were 



44 MAN AND WOMAN CREA TED B UT 

created. They were created in the same day, evi- 
dently at the same time. But the record of the 
forming of the male man is one thing, and that of 
building the woman another. The male was 
formed " out of dust of the ground." Subse- 
quently a garden was planted eastward in Eden, 
and this man, all alone, was put into it to dress 
and to keep it. During this period of loneliness 
he was commanded not to eat of the tree of 
knowledge. It was also during this unmated 
state that the work of naming all the cattle, and 
all the fowl of the air, and every beast of the 
field was performed. It is an unwarranted 
assumption to suppose that this was done by any 
supernatural process. It must have consumed 
some time, perhaps days, and possibly weeks or 
years. But however short the time, it was be- 
cause among all the living creatures which were 
brought before him, there was no companion for 
him, that woman was made. 

The account of this transaction is so connected 
with the work he had just accomplished that no 
other construction can be put upon it. The con- 
junction " but " can have no other work in this 
sentence than to thus make the building of the 
woman a sequence of the discovery. " And 
Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl 
of the air, and to ever}^ beast of the field ; but 
for Adam there was not found a help meet for 
him." It was after this that the deep sleep fell 
upon him and he lost a rib and found a wife. 

As in the account of the forming of the male 
man — the making of a form for him, so in this 
a verb is used whose primary significance is 
to build, and it is rendered "builded" in the 
margin. It is the verb which is rendered build 
in Gen. viii., 20 ; x., 11; xii., 7, 8 ; 1 Kings vi., 1 ; 



NOT FRAMED AT THE SAME TIME. 45 

xviii., 32, and often elsewhere. A form was made 
for man oi the dust ; a body was builded for the 
woman from the rib of the man. 

To another class of Bible scholars this exposi- 
tion will be easily answered by the fact that the 
command to multiply and replenish the earth 
occurs before the statement of the forming or 
embodying of man in his earthly house is record- 
ed. They find no difficulty in the anachronism 
by supposing that the seventh verse of the second 
chapter is only a restatement of the same fact in 
another form as that recorded in the first chapter. 
But when we desire to use it as relating to a dis- 
tinct and subsequent event, the anachronism 
means everything. 

This objection cannot be answered to the 
satisfaction of those who believe that the com- 
prehensive sentences of that first chapter record 
events just in the order of their occurrence. 
He who believes that the first creative fiat made 
only the earth and its heavens, and that other 
minor works filled up the other intervening three 
days, or three geological epochs, or three thous- 
and years, until, on the fourth day, God made 
the sun and moon and millions of fixed stars, 
which are suns much larger than our sun, and 
that he then judiciously spread them out around 
our great earth for its sole use and benefit — he 
will find in this statement of the command to 
multiply, in advance of the account of the form- 
ing of the body, an unanswerable argument, but 
nobody else will. As those who believe such an 
absurdity are very few, and altogether beyond 
the reach of reason, we shall not try to satisfy 
them. 

The Bible, therefore, teaches nothing more 
clearly and constantly than that the mind is the 



46 UNIFORMITY OF INSPIRATION 

man. No other one thought is so uniformly pre- 
sented as this. Paul means to state a fundamental 
truth when he says the first man was made a "liv- 
ing soul," not a compound of matter and mind, of 
soul and body. This idea begins with the first 
chapter of Genesis, and, permeating the whole 
book, is repeated in almost the last verse of the 
last chapter of Revelation. In the first he is 
presented as a pure, holy spirit, the image and 
likeness of God ; while in the latter he is unalter- 
ably filthy or holy, as his moral character had 
been during the period of his earthly probation. 
It is not said : " let the soul of him that is unjust 
be unjust still, and the soul of him that is filthy 
be filthy still," but the language is used of the 
man, and that, too, of the man disembodied, or 
unclothed. Not even the omnipotence and holi- 
ness of God are so frequently and constantly 
presented as this fundamental truth. The Bible 
teaches the spiritual character of man or it 
teaches nothing concerning him. 

But the theory of the mode of man's immor- 
tality which is contained in this book is not 
dependent wholly or even chiefly on the cor- 
rectness of the exposition of the Mosaic account 
of his creation herein discussed. With unshaken 
confidence in its correctness, it is introduced 
merely as corroborative of the general teachings 
of the Bible, to be alluded to hereafter, and it 
is no more to be despised than the arguments 
are which are drawn from the nature of the mat- 
ter which enters into the body, so much like all 
other matter that it may well be said to have 
been made of dust, while the common language 
of life and the uniform sentiments of all peoples 
are worthy a place in any argument upon this 
subject. 



AND COMMON OPINIONS. 47 

We speak of the integrity and entirety of a 
man, though first one limb, then another, and 
another, and another is amputated, until there 
is left only the casement of the vital organs, and 
even that may survive the limbs for years, and 
at last become all gangrenous and effete ; at 
every stage, to the very last, he is a man — a 
whole man, either in law or in the esteem of his 
acquaintances, though only a loathsome fragment 
of the physical form remains. 

Neither does an occasional mention of the 
soul, the man, as "my soul," or "my spirit," 
indicate that the body is a part of the man. 

But it is suggested that Paul's prayer, "Your 
whole soul, body, and spirit be preserved blame- 
less," and " Present your bodies a living sacrifice," 
and " Your bodies are the temples of the Holy 
Ghost," all indicate that the body is a part of 
the man, because it is included in the scheme 
of redemption. We answer that this no more 
proves such a thing than the injunction under 
the Old Testament, which is continued under 
the spirit of entire consecration in the New, 
which required the bells, and pots, and fields, and 
flocks of the children of Israel to be sanctified 
to the Lord, proves that they, too, were the 
subjects of grace and a part of the man. The 
idea is the same under each dispensation: all 
that a good man is or has belongs to God. 

If it be insisted as an answer to all this reas- 
oning that the record says he formed man of the 
dust of the ground, using the word formed in the 
sense of created, the argument proves entirely too 
much for its own friends. If the material body 
which was fashioned or formed out of pre-existing 
material is the man, then that alone is the man ; 
for the wildest dualist h#s never insisted that the 



48 THE BODY SANCTIFIED. 

soul was made of dust. The record does not say 
that he formed a part of man of dust, and then 
completed his manhood by introducing an im- 
mortal soul. In whatever sense man was formed 
of dust, the entire man was formed ; hence the 
body becomes the man, and the breath of life 
which was breathed into him became no more a 
part of him than the steam becomes a part of the 
machinery to which it imparts motion and power, 
except that by this inspiration the man — that 
material form which was made of dust — became a 
living soul. This is an empalement upon an un- 
comfortable horn of their own dilemma, and 
proves that after all man is closely related to 
other animals ; for that dust, that clay, was dust 
of the ground, and, like all other dust, had been 
enriched by the decay of the animals which had 
lived and died in the millions of ages which had 
preceded the introduction of man — the making of 
man out of dust which had in all probability once 
entered into the organisms of the extinct races of 
former geological periods. Is this the God-like 
man, made in the image of the Creator? 

In concluding this chapter, we wish to say 
that we have sought to arrive at the true meaning 
of inspiration in the account of man's creation, by 
that legitimate process of comparing Scripture 
with Scripture, and keeping constantly in mind 
the underlying truth of the whole Bible : that man 
was created in the image of God. As a material 
being, he could not be thus created ; hence we 
conclude that this record shows that the mind is 
the man. The spirit, or soul, is the image of the 
Invisible Father. Dr. Whedon, in his notes on 
John iv., 14, beautifully expresses the Scriptural 
idea, " Herein God and incorporeal man agree, 
that both are mind, personality, or spirit, and 



DR. WHEDON. 4U 

being of the same nature, they are able to blend 
and commune, spirit with spirit." The views of 
Bishop Butler will be found in a foot note at 
the end of Chapter XV. 



CHAPTER III. 

The Mode of Immortality as Taught by Job. 

' A NY discussion of the mode of man's immor- 
ii tality, which would examine the teachings 
of the Bible, must of course include a review of 
what is said in the book of Job ; for more fre- 
quent allusion is made to the future state in that 
book than in all the Old Testament beside. 
When Job lived, or who he was, is not material 
to our purpose, further than to say that it is 
probable that he lived at least two hundred years 
before Abraham, and, therefore, not less than six 
hundred years before Moses. Without detract- 
ing from the authority of his opinions we must 
notice that they partake of the prevailing notions 
of early ages and embrace doctrines that we now 
know to be false. 

Misled by the popular fallacies of the times 
relative to the shape and position of the earth, 
Job, in common with the nations of antiquity, 
believed that there was a world under this world 
to which the dead went ; and this the Hebrews 
called S/ieol, while the Greeks called it Hades. 
To men of modern thought this seems like a 
strange delusion ; but it is not so strange that the 
generations believed it who regarded this earth 
as a horizontal plane of limited dimensions, 
around which the heavenly bodies made their 
diurnal revolutions, as that men who know that 
this astronomical notion has long been exploded. 



NO HADES OR SHEOL. 51 

by the discoveries of science, should yet retain 
not only the language, but the faith of those 
times of ignorance and superstition, and retain in 
their theology a Hades for the dead, simply be- 
cause Bible writers, using the language of their 
times, and being no wiser in the philosophy of 
things than their neighbors, wrote of such a place 
as the abode of the departed. When driven by 
their better knowledge of the physical world 
from the absurdity, as to the locality of a place 
for the dead, they cling to the existence of such a 
place somewhere in the universe of God, because 
Job and David believed there was a receptacle 
for the dead; and because Bible writers speak 
of it (a blunder and absurdity which underlie 
much of the false philosophy yet in existence 
concerning the mode of man's immortality) ; never 
seeming to think that an enlightenment which 
removes it from that cavern under the ground 
takes it forever from the realm of actuality. 
If there be no Hades where Grecian mythology 
located it ; no Infernus where Roman philosophy 
placed it; no Skeol, where Hebrew superstition 
put it, then there is no more a Hades than 
there is a river Styx, or a cave Avernus, or a river 
Lethe. It is just as legitimate to prove from the 
Bible that there must be some palace for the sun 
such as the Greek fables represented when they 
pictured him coming forth with his winged 
horses ; for the Psalmist says the sun has a taber- 
nacle, and " He cometh out of his chamber and 
rejoiceth as a strong man to run his race." It is 
beautiful poetry with David, adopting the notions 
of his times concerning the whereabouts of the 
sun during the night, yet that does not make 
the existence ol such a chamber or palace a 
reality, though David believed it as firmly as he 



52 THE WORD "RESURRECT/OAT" 

believed in the existence of Sheol, and upon the 
same authority. 

Because, in their creed, the relative position 
of this world of spirits was beneath or under the 
earth, the common expression was that to die 
was to go downward — down to Sheol. It em- 
braced more than the literal lowering of the body 
into the grave, and included the supposed de- 
scent of the spirit to the dark unknown. Any 
reference to a return to earth, or to life, would, 
therefore, be expressed as a coming up, or a 
rising from the dead, and hence the word resur- 
rection became applicable to the act of returning, 
and also to the state of those who had returned. 
The argument so flippantly used by those who 
believe in the dogma of a future general resur- 
rection, and so conclusive as they suppose, that 
because the Saviour and the apostles used the 
word " resurrection" in its popular sense, without 
explanation, therefore its etymological meaning 
must indicate a fact that we dare not question, 
is just as valuable and conclusive as that, because 
the same authorities used the words rising and 
setting as applied to the sun, therefore, the sun 
rises and sets, just as the popular opinion of that 
day maintained. 

The extreme sufferings of Job led him to 
speak familiarly and frequently of death, but his 
views were but little if any above the notions 
of his times, notwithstanding they are often re- 
ferred to as authority by a certain type of Chris- 
tian expositors. He says: "As the cloud is 
consumed and vanisheth away, so he that goeth 
down to Sheol shall come up no more. . . . 
Let me alone, that I may take comfort a little, 
before I go whence I shall not return, even to the 
land of darkness and the shadow of death ; a land 



PERVERTED FROM ITS MEANING. 53 

of darkness, as darkness itself; and of the shadow 
of death, without any order, and where the light 
is as darkness. ... Man dieth, and wasteth 
away : }^ea, man giveth up the ghost, and where 
is he? As the waters fail from the sea and the 
flood decayeth and drieth up, so man lieth down 
and riseth not. Till the heavens be no more, they 
shall not awake, or be raised out of their 
sleep." 

There is in all this a distinct avowal of a faith 
in man's immortality, but there is not the remot- 
est allusion to a bodily resurrection. His Sheol, 
the abode of the departed, was not only under- 
ground, but it was a land from which there was 
to be no return. " He shall come up no more ;" 
"I shall not return;" "man riseth not;" "they 
shall not awake," were the gloomy, cheerless 
views he entertained of those who enter that land 
of darkness, that shadow of death. It was, in- 
deed, a land of conscious existence, but no pleas- 
ure or joy was anticipated therein. 

Some, intent on proving the doctrine 
of a future bodily resurrection, even at the 
expense of making Job contradict himself, con- 
strue his poetic allusion to the eternity of the 
heavens as the measure of the duration of man's 
continuance in that land of darkness, so as to 
teach that by and by, when the heavens shall be 
no more, then man shall awake and be raised out 
of his sleep. Such a perversion of the plain 
meaning of any man's language for any purpose 
is reprehensible, but when it is undertaken with 
the language of Scripture to bolster an untenable 
dogma of man's invention, it becomes unpardon- 
able. What respect could we entertain for any 
man who should announce that Watts believed 
that immortality would ultimately end and that 



54 THE VIEWS OF GOD 

then his days of praise would cease, and attempt 
to prove it by quoting the following lines from 
that poet? 

" My days of praise shall ne'er be past, 
While life, and thought, and being last, 
Or Immortality endures." 

Such a perversion of the plain intent of the 
poet would deserve the scorn of all honest men, 
yet the language is almost identical with that of 
Job. The perpetuity of one thing is predicated 
upon the acknowledged eternity of another. 
The argument is the same with Job and with 
Watts. 

But we are told that in the nineteenth chapter 
Job declares in favor of a bodily resurrection. 
That is the very thing that he does not, even re- 
motely or by inference. His language, as given 
in the common version, is : "I know that my Re- 
deemer liveth, and that he shall stand in the lat- 
ter day upon the earth and though after my skin, 
worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I 
see God, whom I shall see for myself and mine 
eyes shall behold, and not for another, though 
my reins be consumed within me." It is notice- 
able in the first place that the translators, who 
were believers in the doctrine of a future resur- 
rection, notwithstanding that thereby they make 
Job contradict his oft-expressed views elsewhere, 
inject into the text the words, day worms, and 
body, which are not in the original. Almost any 
dogma can be maintained by thus doctoring the 
Scriptures. 

A literal translation of the original would read 
very nearly as follows : " I know that I have a 
living kinsman and that at last he shall stand in 
the field. Although they [diseases] shall not 



EXAMINED. 55 

only consume my skin, but the fat and muscles 
under the skin also, nevertheless, I shall see God 
in the flesh. With my eyes I shall see him, and 
not another for me." 

If there is anything prophetic at all in this 
text, it refers to the coming Messiah, his living 
kinsman, whom he expected to see incarnated. 

The passage may be aptly paraphrased thus, 
if it refers to any far off event : " Let my words 
be written ; let them be engraved with an iron 
pen and lead in the rock forever, for I know that, 
bankrupt and diseased as I am, I shall have a 
kinsman who shall be my Redeemer, I may now 
be consumed by diseases, yet he shall stand at 
last in the field of strife, having overcome all 
foes ; and I shall see God clothed in my flesh. I 
shall see him for myself, and no others shall see 
him for me." 

It is impossible to reconcile Job's gloomy 
views of the after-life, so often expressed, with 
the hope of a resurrection, which this passage has 
been distorted to teach. He was as much in- 
spired when he wrote the fourteenth chapter as 
when he wrote the nineteenth, yet in that he be- 
moans the fate of the dead in this most striking 
comparison : " There is hope of a tree if it is cut 
down that it will sprout again and that the tender 
branches thereof will not cease ; though the root 
thereof wax old in the earth and the stock there- 
of die in the ground, yet through the scent of 
water it will bud and bring forth boughs like a 
plant. But man dieth and wasteth away, yea 
man giveth up the ghost and where is he ? Man 
lieth down and riseth not." 

Would he have written in this doleful strain 
had he entertained a Christian's hope of immor- 
tality? Would he have written thus if he had 



56 THE ARGUMENT FROM JOB 

believed that to die was to be separated from the 
body only a little while and that then soul and 
body should be re-united all glorious and im- 
mortal ? 

So untenable indeed is the argument hereto- 
fore derived from Job that it is almost wholly 
abandoned by late Biblical scholars, even by 
those who suppose that elsewhere they find in 
the Bible the doctrine of a bodily resurrection. 
While the commentators of the last century and 
the early part of this were almost uniform in dis- 
covering an allusion in these verses to the far- 
off bodily resurrection, the abandonment of this 
by the best writers of late years is so general that 
we should not feel justified in referring to the old 
interpretation, except that we know it to be com- 
monly received and preached as a proof of a bodily 
resurrection. The chapter on Job, in McClintock 
and Strong's Encyclopedia, disposes of the whole 
subject in this significant sentence: " The later 
doctrine of the resurrection of the body is not 
found in this poem." We therefore dismiss Job 
with the conviction that there is no resurrection 
of the body taught by him, or even hinted at. 

Dr. Townsend, one of the Professors in the 
Methodist Theological school at Boston, though 
a believer in a general resurrection of some sort, 
thus disposes of Job : " The true meaning of this 
passage is easily discovered if we embrace in our 
view the whole drift of the afflicted man's argu- 
ment. He had been repeatedly charged with a 
want of integrity. His friends and enemies had 
told him that his sins were the cause of his mis- 
fortunes. In his heart he knew that this was 
false. He had faith that his past course would 
soon receive vindication, and that his integrity 
would be proved and acknowledged. The har- 



EXPLAINED. 67 

mony of the entire book of Job depends upon 
taking this view of the subject. The passage 
may be paraphrased thus: You suppose that I 
am forsaken of God on the account of my sins. 
It is not true. To be sure I have not the means 
at present to disprove your position or establish 
mine, but I believe that though I am now suffer- 
ing and may suffer still more, even until the 
worms eat my skin and then eat into my body, 
yet in my flesh, on the earth, and before I die, I 
shall see and you will see my vindication." 



CHAPTER IV. 
The Views of Jacob, Samuel and David. 

PURSUING our inquiry into the teachings of 
the patriarchs on this subject, we next find 
Jacob, nearly four hundred years later, giving his 
opinion. The immediate occasion of his uttering 
his faith was the calamity which he supposed had 
befallen Joseph, who had recently gone from him 
in the flush of young manhood ; but whose clothes 
are before him all torn and bloody, with the 
information that they had been found in this 
plight, under circumstances which indicated that 
Joseph had been devoured by wild beasts. What 
does Jacob say? Among many other things he 
expresses his opinion of his own and of his son's 
immortality thus : " I shall go down into the grave 
unto my son." He did not mean the grave, for 
his son had not been buried, but had been de- 
voured by wild beasts. Even then his flesh and 
bones were becoming a part of their flesh and 
bones, but he thinks of his son as living still, not 
a naked ghost, but the veritable Joseph in the 
Sheol which his times had fitted up, under or within 
the earthy as the place for departed spirits. Jacob 
did not say that the soul of his boy lived, mean- 
ing only a part of the man, and that his own soul, 
as a part of himself, would rejoin it shortly, and 
that after awhile the beasts of prey would restore 
the body of the boy and that the grave would 
give up his own body. There is not the remotest 



THE APPARITION OF SAMUEL. 59 

allusion to any such a faith. He simply says : " I, 
Jacob, myself, shall go down to Joseph, my boy, 
and then we shall see each other again." 

Years pass in the history of the people which 
had been chosen as the depositary of truth, before 
we find another incident from which we can 
deduce the notions entertained by them concern- 
ing the mode of man's immortality. Samuel, the 
faithful prophet, had died, and God had forsaken 
Saul. In the madness of his abandonment he 
sought an interview with Samuel dead, whom he 
had utterly contemned while living. Accordingly 
he visited a woman familiar with spirits, or in 
modern phraseology, a spirit-medium. The lan- 
guage used in the interview is suggestive of the 
notions of the times. The woman asks : " Whom 
shall I bring up to thee?" And Saul answers: 
41 Bring me up Samuel." Here we have, five hun- 
dred years later, the same ideas of death, and of 
the future life. To die was to go down to that 
under-world called Sheol; a notion not altogether 
abandoned to this day, except that we send the 
wicked only downward, while we send the right- 
eous upward so as to fix a great gulf between 
them! 

The phraseology is further suggestive. The 
dead retained their individual personality and 
identity. There is no calling for the ghost or 
spirit of Samuel, but for Samuel himself, and the 
veritable old prophet came, a little displeased, as 
he well might be, at this disturbing of his quiet 
for so insignificant a purpose ; and he talked with 
Saul. Among the instructive passages in this 
account of spirit manifestation is this : Samuel 
said to Saul, after much other conversation : " To- 
morrow shalt thou and thy sons be with me" He 
does not say thy soul or ghost, as a part of thy- 



60 THE HEBRE W VIE W 

self, shall be with my soul or ghost, the immortal 
part of me, but thou and thy sons, whatever consti- 
tutes your personal identities, shall be with me, 
myself, my veritable person. We may have occa- 
sion to allude to this incident hereafter as illus- 
trative of an important law of spirit-life. 

Not many years afterwards David was called 
to part with a child whom he dearly loved. The 
circumstances were such as to call out his ideas 
of a future life, and to commit the same to the 
record. When he perceived that the child was 
dead he ceased to lament and fast, but went to 
the house of God and worshiped. In explana- 
tion of this unusual conduct he says : " / shall go 
to him but he shall not return to me,'* There was 
no dividing of his child into soul and body, and no 
allusion to any far off resurrection. To his mind 
the child continued to live, not indeed in that 
lovely casket, but in the land of immortals, 
whither he too was going. It lived, a veritable 
child, though absent from the body, and he was 
to go to him, a veritable man and father. The 
body was no doubt tenderly cared for, and suit- 
ably laid away, and so were the little garments 
which he had worn, and all for the same reason, 
the association which each had had with the 
child now gone on before — he had worn both. 

Years afterwards, when about to die, he said : 
" Before I go hence, to be no more," still clinging 
to the idea that his personal self should depart, 
using substantially the language of Paul and 
Peter under similar circumstances. 

We call to mind no other incident in the Old 
Testament which developed the sentiments of 
patriarchs or prophets in regard to the mode 
of man's immortality, except that in the account 
of the death of each of the patriarchs it is said, 



COMPARED WITH THE PAGAN. 61 

" and he was gathered unto his people," evidently 
intending to teach a continued personal existence 
of the real man in another mode of life. 

We see how, in most respects, the opinions of 
these Bible characters correspond with the no- 
tions of surrounding nations. In the opinion of 
each, there was a vast receptacle for the dead 
somewhere under ground. The heathen poets 
more elaborately define this place, giving the 
Cave Avernus as the opening to it; and there is 
no reason to believe that the Sheol of the Hebrews 
was any farther away from the earth than the 
Infernus of the Romans. It was a vast cave 
within the earth or under it, supposing the earth 
to be a flat, thin surface. And, as we have 
already hinted, the demonstrations of science, 
which reveal that what is under us at this hour 
will be above us twelve hours hence unless it is 
within the earth, have not materially modified 
the opinions of those who choose to accept old 
notions as true, without troubling themselves to 
notice their absurdities. 

Though there was this similarity in the views 
of the ancient Hebrews and surrounding heathen 
nations, and though the future of the best of the 
patriarchs was cheerless as compared with the 
hereafter of Christians, yet it was incomparably 
better than the fabrications of the heathen poets, 
which have, by the way, contributed so largely to 
many modern notions of the future life. While 
these made their Infernus a receptacle of ghosts, 
as only a part of man, — where they should be tor- 
mented by furies and harpies, only a very few of 
them drinking of the waters of oblivion and 
returning to the upper world, to return again 
to the shades, after having inhabited another 
body, and so on endlessly, — the Sheol of the He- 



62 BEA UTY OF DA FID'S FAITH. 

brews was a place in which the man should dwell, 
disembodied, it is true,yet in the society of those 
once loved on earth. There is a world of beauty 
in David's faith, bordering indeed on that of Paul. 
He not only expected to meet his departed babe 
and the lost of life, but he expected to be in the 
society of his Lord and be like him : " I shall be 
satisfied when I awake with thy likeness." 



CHAPTER V. 
Isaiah, Hosea, Ezekiel and Daniel. 

WHILE there is nothing in the writings of 
these prophets which relates to the mode 
of the future life, if indeed there is any reference 
to a future life at all, it is proper that we should 
refer to the few passages which, strangely 
enough, are supposed by some to prove the doc- 
trine of a future general resurrection. 

David is sometimes quoted, (Ps. xvi., 10,) 
" Thou wilt not leave my soul in Hades nor suffer 
Thine holy one to see corruption." There is no 
future general resurrection here, even if we were 
at liberty to wrest it from its specific purpose. 
We have the best of authority for referring the 
whole of this Psalm to Christ, in whose resur- 
rection it was fulfilled most literally. His body 
was raised the third day, having seen no cor- 
ruption, but that can not be a pattern or example 
of the resurrection of bodies which have for ages 
been consumed into dust. 

Isaiah has been quoted as though he taught 
that the dead bodies of men would rise at some 
future general resurrection : " Thy dead men 
shall live, together with my dead body shall they 
arise. Awake and sing, ye that dwell m the dust : 
for thy dew is as the dew of herbs and the earth 
shall cast out the dead." (Chap, xxvi., 19.) 

It would seem, indeed, that Isaiah did teach a 
literal resurrection of dead bodies, in spite of 



64 THE PROPHECY OF ISAIAH 

Paul's declaration that flesh and blood can not 
inherit the kingdom of God, if he had been 
speaking of a future life at all. But alas for such 
a conclusion ! he was dealing with temporal af- 
fairs altogether ; and such as were in no enviable 
condition. He was speaking of the future of his 
nation, not of himself or of the world, speaking of 
temporal things, not of eternal things. Take the 
connection and read, beginning at the twelfth 
verse : 

" Lord, thou wilt ordain peace for us. . Other 
Lords have had dominions over us : but by thee 
only will we make mention of thy name. They 
[other Lords] are dead, they shall not live, they 
are deceased, they shall not rise, therefore thou 
hast visited and destroyed them. Thou hast in- 
creased the nation, . . . thou hast removed it 
far unto the ends of the earth. In trouble they 
visited thee, they poured out a prayer when thy 
chastening hand was upon them, . . We have 
been in pain, we have as it were brought forth 
wind. We have not wrought any deliverance in 
the earth neither have the inhabitants of the world 
fallen. Thy dead men shall live, my dead bodies 
shall arise. Awake, and sing, ye that dwell in the 
dust, for thy dew is as the dew of herbs and the 
land of tyrants shalt thou cause to fall. Come, my 
people, enter thou into thy chambers, hide thyself 
for a little moment, until the indignation be over- 
past, for the Lord cometh out of his place to 
punish the inhabitants of the earth for their in- 
iquity." 

In this grouping together the text and the 
context, we have omitted no word or phrase that 
was necessary to the connection or meaning. 
We have taken the liberty of giving a literal 
translation of so much of the nineteenth verse as 



REFERS TO NA TIONAL AFFAIRS. 65 

is depended upon to prove the doctrine of a 
future general resurrection, and when thus trans- 
lated there is not the semblance of resurrection 
left ; as the context shows there is not even in the 
common version. We appeal to every Hebrew 
scholar for the substantial correctness of this 
translation. 

Whatever may be intended by this graphic 
description of national humiliation and national 
deliverance, the resurrection of the bodies of all 
men at some future time is not in it at all, even 
as the common version stands. We have yet to 
find a commentator of respectability who as- 
sumes that the doctrine of a future resurrection 
can be proven by this passage. They uniformly 
apply it to some deliverance of the children of 
Israel, but generally follow Bishop Lowth in say- 
ing : " The deliverance of the people of God from 
a state of the lowest depression is explained by 
images plainly taken from the resurrection of the 
dead." Indeed ! But that is assuming the very 
thing which needs proof. The Bible nowhere 
teaches such a resurrection ; why should prophets 
illustrate temporal deliverances by the creature 
of uninspired imaginations? 

Identical in import is the prophecy of Hosea 
written a few years after the prophecy of Isaiah : 
" The iniquity of Ephraim is bound up, his sin is 
hid. The sorrows of a travailing woman shall 
come upon him. ... 1 will ransom them 
from the power of the grave. I will redeem them 
from death. O death, I will be thy plague ! O 
grave, I will be thy destruction. . . . Samaria 
shall become desolate," etc. (Hosea xiii., 
12-16.) 

Turning to Ezekiel we fare no better. In the 
thirty-seventh chapter is a remarkable vision 



66 THE VISION OF EZEKIEL. 

which has been tortured times and ways without 
number to prove or to illustrate the doctrine of a 
future general resurrection. It would be amus- 
ing, if the matter were not so serious, to listen to 
the thousand eloquent and pathetic discourses 
which have been " founded " on this vision ; all 
containing graphic descriptions of the rattling 
among dry bones which Gabriel's trumpet is sup- 
posed to cause at that great day. 

Only one commentator that we have been 
able to consult is entitled to any respect in the in- 
terpretation of this vision, yet, strange to say, the 
commentators who deduce resurrection from it 
almost wholly ignore him. He was, however, 
rather a good old man, though a slave, and he 
lived once on the banks of the river Chebar, and 
his name was Ezekiel. He thus comments : 
" These bones are the whole house of Israel. Be- 
hold they say, our bones are dried and our hope 
is lost. We are cut off from our parts. Thus 
saith the Lord God : behold, O my people, I will 
open your graves and cause you to come up out of 
your graves, and bring you into the land of Israel. 
And ye shall know that I am the Lord when I 
have opened your graves, O my people, and brought 
you up out of your graves, and shall put my spirit 
in you and ye shall live, and I shall place you in 
your own land. Chap, xxxvii. 11-14. 

This was Ezekiel's interpretation of Ezekiel's 
vision, yet in the face of this we find Bishop 
Lowth and his followers saying : " It is also a 
clear intimation of the resurrection of the dead." 
The Bible, as a revelation of truth and as a guide 
to man, loses its authority with thinking men, 
when those who claim to be its expositors thus 
pervert it. 

The only other passage in the old testament 



DANIEL'S DREAM. 67 

which is claimed as proving the doctrine of a 
future general resurrection is that in Daniel, 
chapter twelfth ; " And many of them that sleep 
in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to 
everlasting life and some to shame and everlast- 
ing contempt. And they that be wise shall shine 
as the brightness of the firmament and they that 
turn many to righteousness, as the stars, forever 
and ever." (Verses 2, 3.) 

In the next verse he is commanded to shut up 
the words and seal the book to the time of the 
end, which proves, we are told, that this refers to 
a general resurrection at the end of the world, 
whereas Daniel never wrote a word on that sub- 
ject in his life, and never even dreamed of it, so 
far as his dreams have come down to us. 

The time of what end, forsooth ! Certainly 
not the end of the world, if indeed the world is 
ever to have an end according to the popular 
notion on that subject. Turn back to verse for- 
tieth in the preceding chapter and let Daniel 
explain Daniel. It will be seen that " the time of 
the end " is rather a lively time, after all, accord- 
ing to this commentator. It reads thus: "At the 
time of the end shall the King of the South push 
him, and the King of the North shall come 
against him, like a whirlwind ; with chariots and 
with horsemen, and with many ships, and he 
shall enter into the countries and shall overflow 
and pass over." 

That certainly does not sound much like the 
scenes which are usually supposed to be con- 
nected with the end of the world. Yet this is 
"the time of the end" to which Daniel was to 
shut up the words and seal the book. 

Reading further, we discover that there was 
something else doing at this " time of the end " 



68 VISIONS AND PROPHECIES 

besides awakening from the dust of the earth : 
" He shall enter into the glorious land and many 
countries shall be overthrown. . . He shall 
stretch forth his hands upon all countries and the 
land of Egypt shall not escape, and he shall have 
power over the treasures of gold and of silver, 
and over all the precious things of Egypt. . . . 
But tidings out of the East and of the North shall 
trouble him, therefore he shall go forth with 
great fury. . . . And at that time [the time 
of the end] shall Michael stand up, . . and 
there shall be a time of trouble such as there 
never was since there was a nation, even to that 
same time [the time of the end,] . . . and 
many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth 
shall awake, etc. 

There is not a word in all this which can by 
any acknowledged law of exegesis be construed 
into even hinting at the resurrection of dead 
bodies at the end of the world. It is a graphic 
description of national disturbances, but nothing 
more. Even if the resurrection of the dead were 
alluded to, it would be fatal to the common 
theory, for only " many " shall awake, not all, as 
the theory of the general resurrection requires. 

.What is said about the relative honor and 
shame of the two classes alluded to was fulfilled 
to the letter, on the return of the children of 
Israel from captivity. Many who, like Ezra, and 
Nehemiah, and Habakkuk, had remained true to 
their religion during the darkest days of the 
captivity, did shine as the brightness of the firma- 
ment, and literally awoke to everlasting life. 
They live yet in the hearts of all who love true 
patriotism and a spirit of sell-sacrifice for the 
good of others, while the timid, time-serving 
crowd, who abandoned all national aspirations 



ALREAD Y FULFILLED. 69 

and became Chaldeans in heart and life, lived 
only in shame and contempt in the new Israel 
which followed the captivity. 

These four prophecies refer to the same event 
in the history of the children of Israel. Isaiah's 
and Hosea's were written in Judea more than a 
hundred years before the captivity. These proph- 
ecies not only foretold the captivity and the man- 
ner of it, but its end and the manner of that also, 
and the 26th chapter of Isaiah and the 13th of 
Hosea are parts of that prophecy. Ezekiel's 
prophecy was written among the captives and 
during the captivity, more than a hundred years 
later than Isaiah's and Hosea's. What Isaiah 
and Hosea had so accurately foretold as to the 
humiliation and overthrow of that people was a 
painful reality with Ezekiel, a part of which he 
was himself; but the marvelous deliverance had 
not yet taken place. It is fitly described by the 
vision of dry bones. He uses the same figure 
concerning the restoration that Isaiah and Hosea 
had used, at least a hundred and twenty years 
before — the opening of graves ; and he, by the 
authority of God himself, applies this figure to 
that event. 

Daniel wrote about fifty years later than 
Ezekiel, yet before the return from the long cap- 
tivity, and he uses the same illustration, the com- 
ing forth of dead men from graves. 

Whether either of the subsequent writers 
knew what those before him had written is im- 
material. It is probable he did, yet these are 
separate and distinct prophecies, extending over 
nearly two hundred years ; and all so minutely 
fulfilled that no comprehensive work on the ful- 
fillment of prophecies has ever omitted to notice 
them. They stand out as testimonials in behalf 



70 REDUCTIO AD ABSURD UM. 

of the spirit of prophecy which is one of the bul- 
warks of our holy religion. Why should they be 
wrested from their legitimate use and made to do 
service in the cause of error ? 

It is little less than impious to say that, the 
teaching of the Bible being in favor of a general 
resurrection, these prophecies may be applied in 
this way. The preacher of historic renown 
whose soul was grieved at high head dresses in a 
former period of their prevalence, and who 
hurled anathemas at them from the words " top 
not come down," (Matt, xxiv, 17,) gave as an 
apology that the spirit of the Bible was against 
high head dresses, and he was, therefore, justified 
in distorting this passage to suit his purpose. 
To apply these prophecies to prove or even 
countenance the doctrine of a general resurrection 
is not any better, but it is worse by so much as 
the subject is one of greater interest and magni- 
tude than the style of a woman's bonnet. His 
sermon was as legitimately drawn from his text 
as is the resurrection of the bodies of men in- 
ferred from these prophecies. 



CHAPTER VI. 

Christ's Teachings with the Sadducees, by the Narrative of 
the Rich Man and Lazarus ; by His Conversation with 
Martha ; by the Transfiguration ; by His Conversation 
with the Dying Thief. 

HAVING failed to find the doctrine of a gen- 
eral or special bodily resurrection in the 
Old Testament, let us examine the New Testa- 
ment for the views of the mode of man's immor- 
tality there taught. Let us examine carefully and 
candidly, for neither the writer nor the reader 
can have any motive for deceiving or being de- 
ceived. The writer would not unsettle the read- 
er's faith if he could, for any less purpose than 
to make him happier, while the reader should 
not refuse to carefully examine the truth because 
of pride of opinion or the dread of innovation. 

We turn to the New Testament with much 
assurance, for life and immortality were brought 
to light — were illustrated — by the Gospel. All 
that man can know of the future life is taught 
in this latest revelation of God to man, unless 
it be those supplemented teachings of yet imper- 
fectly recognized pyschological phenomena which 
seem to bring the hidden life somewhat within the 
range of human experience. To learn, therefore, 
what it teaches is to acquire all attainable know- 
ledge on this subject; hence it should be studied 
not only by its own light, but by all the light 
which science and experience can throw upon it. 

At the time of the coming of Christ, the Jew- 
ish people did not believe in human immortality 



72 ERRONEOUS OPINIONS 

as generally as in the earlier and purer ages of 
the nation. During the dark period of their his- 
tory which intervened between the closing of pro- 
phetic vision and the dawning of the Day Star, a 
period of about four hundred years, they had sub- 
stituted the vilest traditions for the pure doctrines 
of their fathers ; making divine service to consist 
of mere form, utterly ignoring the spirit of wor- 
ship, and materializing everything. Prayer was 
no longer the communion of a humble heart with 
the Divine Father, but it had become a form of 
vain repetitions, or a species of self-laudation, 
with bitter denunciations and contempt for others. 
The Pharisees, who were the extreme literalists of 
that day, were prompt to tithe the meanest of gar- 
den herbs, but they cared nothing for justice or 
mercy. There was not a requirement of the deca- 
logue which they had not abrogated by their ma- 
terialism. Tradition had become supreme, and 
legends were held in greater esteem than the 
authentic facts of their national history. 

The doctrine of man's immortality had not 
escaped this general demoralization. Living 
among an educated heathen people, and being in 
political subjection to them, the Jews were more 
likely to descend to their level than to lift the 
heathen to the plane which the Hebrew people 
had occupied in the days of David and Solomon. 
Among other defections they had substituted the 
heathen notion of the compound nature of man 
for the sublimer Scriptural idea of the divine 
image being the man; and they spoke of man 
as being composed of soul and body. They had 
adopted the heathen idea of Tartarus, but had 
transferred it from the regions below to the dis- 
mal valley of the Sons of Hinnom, near Jerusalem ; 
and retaining the idea of burning as the punish- 



IN THE JEWISH CHURCH. 73 

ment of the wicked, Gehenna became the hell of 
their times, and a place of perpetual burnings. 
Those who did not wholly ignore the doctrines 
of immortality which their fathers held fixed up a 
bungling compromise between the teachings of 
inspiration and the doctrines of the heathen, and 
believed that at some future time the body would 
come forth from the grave and be reanimated by 
the soul, and that soul and body would dwell 
together for ever, the good in some place above 
the earth, the wicked in the burning flames of 
Gehenna, near Jerusalem. 

It is not strange, therefore, that a large and 
influential sect, called Sadducees, arose and, con- 
templating the absurdity of the popular notion, 
swung to the other extreme and denied the doc- 
trine of immortality altogether. Similar material- 
istic doctrines at a later day have contributed to a 
like result. But the Sadducees were false in their 
conclusions, because they were false in their 
premises, as we shall see. 

No doubt they had often confounded, if not 
convinced, the Pharisees by presenting the logical 
results of their doctrine of the resurrection of the 
bodies of men; and now they approach Christ 
with the confusion which must result from such a 
resurrection as they had been taught to expect. 
" In the resurrection whose wife shall she be?" 
they asked, with an assurance that if the seven 
men all claimed the one woman there must be 
trouble. The answer is conclusive as against the 
Sadducees, and is valuable for all time, as throw- 
ing more light upon the mode of man's immor- 
tality than any other lesson in the Bible. "Ye 
do err, not knov/ing the Scriptures nor the power 
of God." There is in this at once a rebuke and 
an apology. Ye do err, but your error grows out 



74 CHRIST REFUTES BOTH 

of a misapprehension of the Scriptures on the sub- 
ject of man's immortality, and in not understand- 
ing the power of God. The mode of the future 
life is not what ye have been led to believe. It 
is not gross and. material, but purely spiritual; 
"as the angels of God in heaven," therefore, 
"they neither marry nor are given in marriage;" 
and he might have added, no doubt, if the ques- 
tion had embraced it, that they neither eat nor 
drink, nor sleep, nor die. 

It will be seen by the thoughtful reader that 
this answer is leveled quite as much against the 
false doctrine of the Pharisees as against the false 
conclusions which the Sadducees drew from it, 
although the immediate intent was to refute the 
conclusion that there is no resurrection — that is, 
no future life.* 



*That the Greek word, Anastasis, in every case in which the 
context does not otherwise fix its meaning, refers to a future exist- 
ence, without any reference to a coming up of the body, is the testi- 
mony of learned men of all ages who have had the candor to 
express their opinion. How it came to be so used is clear from the 
prevailing notions of ancient times, that to die was to go downwards 
— for the soul to go down to the Hades of early times. To live 
again or to continue to live would naturally be expressed by some 
word which implied a return. The Greek verb from which this 
noun is derived simply means to stand tip or to stand again, a posi- 
tion which implies life. Dr. Dwight, a man of unquestioned learn- 
ing and fairness, thus comments on this word: 

" This word is commonly but often erroneously rendered ' res- 
urrection.' So far as I have observed, it usually denotes our exist- 
ence beyond the grave. Its original meaning is to stand up, to stand 
again. As standing is the appropriate position of life, conscious- 
ness and activity, and lying down the appropriate posture of the 
dead, the unconscious, the inactive, this word is not unnaturally 
employed to denote the future state of spirits who are living, con- 
scious, active beings. Many passages of Scripture would be ren- 
dered more intelligible, and the thoughts contained in them more 
just and impressive, had this word been translated agreeably to its 
real meaning. This observation will be sufficiently illustrated by a 
recurrence to that remarkable passage which contains the dispute 
between our Saviour and the Sadducees. ' Then came to him the 



SADDUCEES AND PHARISEES. 75 

We shall refer hereafter to the puerile evasion 
of the force of this answer, as against a bodily re- 
surrection, which assumes that the Great Teacher 
here meant to say that in the resurrection — in 
the future life — so much of the body as constitutes 
the sexual distinctions will be omitted, because 
they will not be needed where there are no mar- 
riages. The occasion was one too important to jus- 
tify such trifling. In rebuking their materialism 
he excepted all of the body to which their ques- 
tion referred, and by just inference he thus ex- 
cepted the whole body. 

The doctrine of a future bodily resurrection 
could hardly receive a more direct contradiction 
than is contained in this conversation, seeing that 
the only question was that of a future existence at 
all. The Sadducees cared nothing about the 
marriage relation in heaven, they denied immortal- 
ity in toto> and to this denial the Saviour answers 
with consummate skill and gentleness, as was his 
wont. 

In the account of this conversation which is 
given by Luke (xx., 37), we have the statement in 
this form : " Now that the dead are raised, even 
Moses showed at the bush, when he called the 
Lord the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, 
and the God of Jacob, for he is not the God of the 



Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection,' me einsi anastasin-^ 
that there is no future state or no future existence for mankind. 
They ask, ' whose wife shali she be in the resurrection ?' en le anasta- 
sei — in the future state. Our Saviour answers ' in the resurrection,' 
or as it should be translated, in the future state, . . . ' they are 
as the angels of God in heaven.' . . . ' Have ye not read that 
which was spoken unto you by God, conceming the future existence 
of those who are dead ?' . . . This passage settles the dispute 
forever. Those who die, therefore, live after they are dead, and the 
future life is the anastasis, which is proven by our Saviour in this 
passage, and which is universally denoted by this term throughout the 
A^ezu 7^eslamenl"/ 



76 IN REFERENCE TO 

dead, but of the living, for all live unto him ;" and 
the argument is irresistible — God is not the God 
of dead men, but of living men ; therefore, these 
patriarchs are alive now. There is not the least 
intimation here that their souls, as only a part of 
them, are living, but the entire man lives. In ad- 
dition to the syllogistic argument, so conclusive as 
to the present living of these noted men, it is 
worthy of notice that the verb used is much more 
significant in this connection than the verbal form 
anastasis would be. It is the verb egeiro, whose 
primary application is to something already 
raised or aroused — the dead are raised, not will 
be hereafter. 

The account given by Mark is in another form 
(xii., 26), yet it teaches the same doctrine exactly : 
"As touching the dead, that they rise' — not that 
they shall rise in some far off future, using the 
same verb, egeiro. The lesson is umistakable. 
They are risen, that is, they live. The dead con- 
tinue to live notwithstanding they pass through 
what we call death. 

The account given by Matthew (xxii., 31), is 
still in another form teaching the same truth : 
" As touching the resurrection of the dead, have 
ye not read that which was spoken unto you by 
God, saying, ' I am the God of Abraham, and the 
God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob' ? God is not 
the God of the dead but of the living." No won- 
der that when the people heard this they were as- 
tonished at his method of teaching. Here was a 
syllogism to prove the present living of these 
patriarchs, of whom their biographers had said, 
" They were gathered to their fathers," when 
mention was made of that change which men call 
death. They were alive at the time of Moses, 
said Christ ; if alive then, they are alive now ; there- 



THE FUTURE LIFE. 77 

fore, there is an anastasis, a future life ; a spirit 
life, and these men are now living it, men, not 
ghosts or souls, as a part of themselves, but real 
men! 

Nothing could be more conclusive against the 
tradition of that age (that the bodies of men are to 
be gathered from the dust of ages,) than this ref- 
utation of the annihilationism of the Sadducees. 
As we have seen, Christ uses the word " resurrec- 
tion " in its legitimate sense, as referring to a fu- 
ture existence, without giving countenance to the 
vagaries of the Pharisees any more than he 
meant to locate hell in the valley of the Sons of 
Hinnom when he used the word of the times in 
speaking of it. 

The lesson, therefore, of this conversation with 
these unbelievers is this : By your own admis- 
sions you believe that God appeared to Moses in 
the bush. If he did, he announced himself as the 
God of the patriarchs who had died long before 
that time. But God is not a God of dead men, 
but of the living ; therefore, Abraham, and Isaac, 
and Jacob were living when God spoke to Moses. 
If living then, they are living still ; hence there is 
a resurrection, a standing up again- of the dead, a 
future life — and that without any reference to bod- 
ies which, like those of these living patriarchs, 
have perished in the earth. 

The argument would have been quite different 
if he had intended to countenance the notion of a 
future general resurrection of the material bodies. 
It would have run about thus: Ye do greatly err, 
not understanding the precise nature of that fu- 
ture life. Only the souls of men go directly to 
hell or heaven at death ; but at the end of the 
world, which will be many thousand years hence, 
the bodies of all men and women will come forth 



78 DIVES AND LAZARUS. 

from the graves, and from the seas, and from the 
flames, and from the flesh of the beasts of prey, 
and, emasculated by the omission of the sexual 
organs, so as to adapt them to a country where 
these organs will not be needed, they will be 
united with the long-separated souls — and then 
heaven or hell will be complete. Instead of such 
an admission, he neither here nor elsewhere gives 
any countenance to the idea of such a general 
resurrection. 

It may be asked why the Saviour did not 
more directly disabuse the minds of the people 
on the subject of the future resurrection of the 
bodies of men if they were in error. We answer 
that he took every possible means to do so, as 
directly, and as explicitly, and as frequently, as he 
did to correct their notions concerning the nature 
of his mission — and with better results, as we shall 
see ; for the apostles never preached a future gen- 
eral resurrection of the bodies of men, while to 
the last they expected a temporal kingdom to be 
set up. 

There is much instruction on this subject in 
the account of the rich man and Lazarus. Laza- 
rus died. No doubt his body was disposed of 
as were the bodies of other beggars, yet the ac- 
count says he was carried by angels into Abra- 
ham's bosom. There was pomp and ceremony 
in disposing of the body of the rich man, yet 
"in hell he lifted up his eyes, being in tor- 
ment, and seeth Abraham afar off and Lazarus 
in his bosom." The lesson to be learned from 
this narrative is every way an important 
one. In the first place it is introduced as a 
historic fact, not as a parable. There was a 
rich man and there was a beggar, they lived 
and died as here stated, and in the resurrec- 



MARTHA'S CREED. 79 

tion — in the anastasis, in the future life — one was 
happy, the other tormented, as here described. 
There is, however, no allusion here to the souls 
or ghosts of these men as only a part of them- 
selves. Divested of all their earthly bodies, they 
appear, in the land of immortality, distinct and 
individual persons. Though one was happy and 
the other tormented, they could recognize each 
other and speak with each other. They had 
eyes and ears and tongues, though they had no 
material bodies ; the spirit body is not to be with- 
out such members. The veritable Abraham was 
there, and the veritable Lazarus and the veritable 
rich man — all that appertained to the individuality 
of either; and all this, while their respective 
bodies were commingling with their mother earth. 

While Jesus was engaged in his duties as a 
teacher on the eastern shore of the Jordan, his 
friend Lazarus, of Bethany, sickened and died. 
Soon afterwards the Master was lound with the 
bereaved sisters, and in answer to a half-reproach- 
ful suggestion of Martha, he says : " Thy brother 
shall rise again," conveying much more meaning 
than a mere reference to the miracle he was about 
to perform ; hence, he uses the word anistemi, re- 
ferring to the after life, the genuine anastasis, con- 
forming his meaning to the simile used with his 
disciples when he said that Lazarus slept. Mar- 
tha comprehended this only within the limitations 
of her education, and answered accordingly, 
that she knew he should live again in the anas- 
tasis, in the world to come, or in the future life ; 
but that would hardly relieve her present be- 
reavement, for her faith postponed that event to 
some far off future, and probably referred to the 
popular belief in the revival of the body itself. 

The tenderness and sympathy of the Saviour 



80 CHRIST'S EXPLANATION 

were not more manifest in the tears which he 
shed at the grave, and in his benevolent act in 
restoring the lost brother, than in the gentle man- 
ner in which he proceeded to correct her mistake 
concerning the mode of man's immortality. It 
was no time for controversy nor for such a logi- 
cal argument as he used with the Sadducees ; 
hence, instead of ministering the comfort which 
that dogma is supposed to contain, by referring 
to the glories of the resurrection morn, as those 
who believe in a future physical resurrection are 
wont to do on such an occasion, he says, with a 
heart all overflowing with love : " Martha, I am 
the resurrection and the life : he that believeth 
in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live, 
and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall 
never die." How could he, in other language, 
have so comprehensively stated the truth which 
eternally antagonizes Martha's creed and the 
materialism of the Pharisees ? No wonder, there- 
fore, that he asked from her a confession of 
faith in him as being what he here represents 
himself. How simple and confiding her answer : 
" I believe that thou art the Christ, the Son of 
God, which should come into the world." 

To evade the force of this plain declaration of 
truth, those who would make Christ teach the 
doctrine of a future bodily resurrection make him 
say : " Shall never die eternally," whereas he said 
nothing at all about eternal death. His is simply 
a declaration of that underlying truth of Chris- 
tianity, which attributes our immortality to Christ, 
the Redeemer, and which he states in other words 
to his disciples when he says, " Because I live, 
ye shall live also ; " and still again when he says : 
" I am the way, the truth and the life." 

Using the word resurrection in the sense that 



OF THE RESURRECTION. 81 

he did when talking with the Sadducees, he here 
declares himself the source of that continuous 
life which is such that, though a man die, he 
continues to live ; though he were dead, yet shall 
he live ; and believing on him, the source of life, 
he does not die, but laying off this mortal, he at 
once puts on the immortal; ceasing to live on 
earth, among men, he lives in heaven, among the 
just made perfect. 

The whole of these tender words were in- 
tended to correct the notion which Martha enter- 
tained in reference to that far-off resurrection at 
some last day, and to bring her to realize that 
what she called death was only a change from 
one mode of life to another, and to assure her 
that life is continuous and eternal.* 

It is not an argument against this interpreta- 
tion to say that no mention is here made of the 
immortality of those who do not believe in Christ. 
To press such an argument is to give color to the 
dogma of the annihilation of the wicked ; for, if 
their immortality is here denied by such an omis- 
sion, it is much more denied elsewhere. 

The transfiguration of Christ teaches the same 
lesson. With disciples chosen for the occasion, 



* The late Bishop Clark, whose scriptural arguments so often 
refute the creed which he writes to establish, in his book, Man all 
Immortal, says : " ' Because I live, ye shall live also ' is the great 
pledge of our uninterrupted life. He that believeth hath eternal life ; 
he that liveth and believeth on Him shall never die, and he that hath 
the Son hath life. Christ is the source of our life, and as the source 
can not become extinct, neither can the life that flows from it. 
Death has no power here. Instead of locking our faculties up in 
unconsciousness, and isolating us from our union with Christ, it can 
only break down some of the obstructions to that intercourse that 
have heretofore existed. 

414 O glorious hope of immortality ! 
At thought of thee, the coffin and the tomb 
Affright no more, and e'en the monster, Death, 
Loses his fearful form, and seems a friend.' " 



82 • CHRIST'S TRANSFIGURATION : 

he went up into a mountain, apart from the mul- 
titude. The scene which took place was one 01 
transcendent beauty and glory. In describing it, 
the apostles use only superlatives, and yet seem to 
labor in vain to give us an adequate idea of the 
reality. Of the person of Christ they say : " His 
face did shine as the sun, and the fashion of his 
countenance was altered." Of his raiment they 
say : " It was white as the light, shining exceed- 
ing white as snow, so as no fuller on earth could 
white it, white and glistering." 

Was the transformation anything else than lay- 
ing aside, for the occasion, the form of a servant, 
which he had assumed when he divested himself 
of the form of God to undertake man's redemp- 
tion ? Peter afterwards calls the mountain the 
" mountain of glory," and Paul alludes to Christ's 
body as there seen, as "his body of glory," like to 
which ours shall be when mortality is swallowed 
up in life. 

The thoughtful scholar cannot fail to connect 
this scene with another witnessed by John, many 
years afterwards, on the island of Patmos. There 
appeared amidst the golden candlesticks, "one 
like unto the Son of Man," 3^et so unlike the 
Man of Sorrows whom he had once followed, that 
he did not recognize him until the apparition in- 
troduced himself as " He who liveth and was 
dead, the Alpha and Omega." John says: "His 
head and his hairs were white like wool, as 
white as snow, and his eyes were as a flame of 
fire, and his feet like unto brass, as if they burned 
in a furnace." 

No painter can transfer this picture to canvas, 
nor can any words give us any clearer idea of 
the reality ; yet the Scriptures give us a personal 
interest in it, because it was to bring us to such 



ITS TEACHINGS 83 

a glory that the Captain of our salvation was 
made perfect through sufferings; for when we 
see him we shall be like him — pure spirit, having 
the image of God, as our first parents had be- 
fore a body was formed for them of the dust 
of the ground. 

At the transfiguration there were with him 
Moses and Elias, and they were like him in their 
appearance. And who were they? One was a 
prophet of olden times, who, after serving his 
generation, left the world in an unusual manner. 
Walking alone with his servant, Elisha, his body 
ascended, dropping only his outer mantle. What 
became of that body and the rest of the clothing 
he was wearing is merely a matter of conjecture. 
Those who believe in a literal resurrection of 
the bodies of men assume that somewhere in 
mid-air it was changed from a vile human 
form into a glorious, immortal and spiritual 
body, such as they suppose mortals will wear 
after the gathering up of the matter which once 
composed their earthly bodies. 

Possibly this may be true. If the Omnipo- 
tent, who could create man a pure spirit in 
his own image and likeness before he formed a 
body for him out of earthy matter, now needs 
this earthly matter, or any part of it, as material 
out of which to make a spiritual body, this was 
probably the case. To us it seems much more 
scriptural and rational to suppose that the mat- 
ter of Elijah's body, like the clothes it wore, 
was decomposed by natural causes, and found 
its way to mother earth as all other bodies do, 
and that the soul, the man, the real Elijah, ap- 
peared in heaven, with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, 
David, Samuel, and other men, in his spiritual 
body; that is, a pure spirit, "as the angels of 



84 TWO VERITABLE MEAT 

God in heaven." Be this as it may, Elijah ap- 
peared with Christ, the veritable Elijah of his- 
tory; not his ghost or spirit as only a part of 
him, and certainly not waiting for a future resur- 
rection for the completion of his heavenly person. 

"O certainly not," says the believer in a 
bodily resurrection ; " he took his body up with 
him, and that body was spiritualized and glori- 
fied ; and in a spiritual body thus prepared, he 
appeared with Christ." Very well; but how 
about Moses? Moses was not translated. He 
was certainly buried (very much as we suppose 
Elijah was). How came he to have a resurrec- 
tion body — a spiritual body — a glorified body? 
He certainly made the same appearance as 
Elijah. Had some body-snatching angel been 
disturbing the repose of his dust in advance of 
Gabriel? This must have been the case if our 
complete equipment for immortality depends 
upon a reunion of soul and body after death. 
But does any one believe that the body of 
Moses was thus disturbed? Is it not still in 
the valley of Moab over against Beth-peor? If 
not, why not? 

Is it not the dictate of good sense, as well 
as of sound faith, to believe the record just as it 
stands? Two men appeared in their heavenly 
forms, in their " spiritual bodies," in that "build- 
ing of God," that " house not made with hands," 
"as the angels of God," "like Christ" in his 
transfigured body, his body of glory, just as all 
the just made perfect are like him when they see 
him as he is — neither of the two having any pre- 
cedence over the other, although there is a dif- 
ference in the general notion concerning their re- 
spective deaths and burials. They and the trans- 
figured body of Christ were visible to the eyes 



APPEARED WITH CHRIST. 85 

of the disciples just as the chariots of Israel and 
the horsemen thereof were visible to the astonish- 
ed servant of Elisha. No theory consistent with 
a future general resurrection can allow this, while 
the plain Bible doctrine of the mode of man's im- 
mortality allows it as entirely consistent with a 
thousand other facts in spiritual phenomena. The 
transaction is only another illustration of the con- 
tinued existence of man, without regard to the 
body, whether, for sufficient reason, that be 
caught up in a chariot of fire, or be buried by 
the hand of God, or that of man. 

But for the necessity of stripping this incident 
of its beauty in order to maintain the tradition of 
a bodily resurrection, it would have been hailed 
in all ages as one of the facts of the Gospel which 
bring to light life and immortality. More hon- 
orable in its associations than the interview be- 
tween Saul and Samuel, it would, like that, have 
taught us how man continues to live after he is 
separated from his temporary earthly encum- 
brance. 

The Saviour evidently intended to teach the 
same lesson in his conversation with the penitent 
thief upon the cross. The narrative is short, but 
it is full of meaning : " This day shalt thou be 
with me in paradise." As in all other cases, 
there is here no separation of the man into parts, 
sending one part to some half-way house to wait 
through interminable ages for a resurrection of 
the other part. Christ never gave any counte- 
nance to such a dogma. Then, if ever, he might 
be expected to ; but he speaks to the man, of the 
man, and says, This day shalt thou, thy personality, 
thy real self, be with me, my real self, not in some 
underground cavern, but in paradise, in heaven. 
Here Christ is again teaching the continued per- 



86 THE DYING THIEF. 

sonal existence of man in spite of that incident 
which we call death. There is to be no lapse of 
time between death and the possession of the 
fruition of immortality. No sophistry can evade 
the force of this lesson. 

Taken together with the other incidents of 
the Crucifixion, the dying expression of the 
Saviour — " Father, into thy hands I commend my 
spirit" — casts no little light upon the mode of 
man's immortality. It was the spirit, the real 
man, escaping from the material form, and enter- 
ing at once into the society of the Father. It 
was to be accompanied by the personality of the 
thief, to the home and presence of God. The thief 
was to go at once to paradise. The spirit of Christ, 
the immortal man, was to go to the hands of the 
Father ; yet, they were to go together ! Where 
is there in all this any place or time for the abode 
of Christ in some intermediate cavern or place, 
which was neither heaven nor earth, to be called 
Sheol or Hades, for thirty-six hours or more, 
before he should return to reanimate the lifeless 
clay which had been committed to Joseph's 
tomb? The Bible and the philosophical theory 
of man's immortality obviate all the confusion and 
absurdity which usually cluster around this clos- 
ing scene, by assuming that the soul, the spirit, 
the real man, left the body, to feel no more inter- 
est in it than in any of the other particles of mat- 
ter which had been taken on and thrown off 
during the third of a century past. The presence 
of God and paradise are one and the same — they 
are heaven. That the dying thief went thus to 
the society of the Father with the Saviour is 
evidence indisputable that we too, dying, shall 
be at once and forever with the Lord. 



CHAPTER VII 

The Resurrection of Christ. 

IN view of the vast importance which attaches 
to the resurrection of Christ, Peter might 
well sav, " Blessed be the God and Father of our 
Lord Jesus Christ, which hath begotten us again 
unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus 
Christ from the dead." It was henceforth to 
become the central fact in Gospel history, and 
one to which the Apostles never failed to appeal 
in their preachings, whether their audience were 
Jew or Gentile. Had this Man of many miracles 
and of matchless speech yielded to the dominion 
of death, that would have been an end of his 
authority and power. It was needful, therefore, 
that this final attestation of his mission should 
be, like the works which testify of him, public 
and indisputable. 

His miracles were not wrought in a corner, 
and his resurrection was so public, and so well 
authenticated, that the apostles never attempted 
to prove it in their discourses to the Jews, but 
always alluded to it as an event which the Jews 
dared not deny. Human ingenuity could not 
have devised stronger proofs than human malice 
planned. Taken from the garden where he would 
have laid down his life of himself, all alone with 
his disciples, he was " lifted up," that the repre- 
sentatives of all nations, then thronging Jerusa- 
lem, might see that he died. That the most care- 



88 CHRIST'S RESURRECTION 

less stranger in all that surging multitude might 
be attracted to the sufferer, there was written 
an " accusation " which could not fail to elicit 
notice, and it was written in every language 
which was spoken by that cosmopolitan crowd. 

All this on the part of his enemies, while the 
Father called attention to the dying Son by the 
unnatural darkness and the earthquake. He had 
certainly died, and he was buried, and again 
human malice interposes to do what human in- 
genuity could not. The tomb was guarded by 
a band of men in the interest of his enemies, so 
as to prevent the possibility of a fraud ; but, in 
spite of all this, he came forth from the grave, 
no less to the surprise of his disciples than of his 
enemies ; but to the disciples it was the begetting 
of a lively hope, while to his enemies it became 
the fact in the history of Christ which they most 
had to dread. But, as we shall see, this resurrec- 
tion had nothing to do with any future resur- 
rection of man, and was never alluded to in that 
sense by the Apostles, but often referred to as a 
final and convincing attestation of authority and 
approval. 

Of this resurrection we notice a few striking 
facts, as they stand out in the narrative. In the 
first place, the literal physical body of Christ 
came up out of the grave just as it had been laid 
there, three days before. To make this physical 
fact possible, the stone which had covered the 
grave was rolled away. What then became of 
the physical body, thus raised, we cannot tell. 

It is very clear to our mind that none of the 
interviews had with the disciples were ever in 
that natural physical body. His challenge to 
Thomas does not necessarily indicate this. The 
disciples were alarmed at the sudden appearance, 



EXAMINED. 89 

and they supposed they had seen a specter or a 
phantom. Dr. Strong renders the word spirit in 
the 37th verse, apparition, and in the 39th verse 
spectre, and the great Greek scholar, Griesbach, 
substitutes phantasma for pneuma in the text. It 
would be eminently appropriate for a man in the 
spirit form, " as an angel of God," to say that a 
phantom or specter had not flesh and bones such 
as the angels assumed when they talked and ate 
with Abraham and rescued Lot from the violence 
of the mob, and "such as you see me have." 
Elsewhere we quote from Dr. Whedon a very 
scriptural and rational opinion of the properties 
and capabilities of spirit, such as angels are. In 
his Notes on Luke xxiv., 29, he attributes to this 
person substantially the same attributes: 

" Perhaps all will grant that our Lord's ordi- 
nary stay between the resurrection and ascension 
was in the invisible form. . . . His body 
possessed a superiority to the control of gravita- 
tion, to the need of food and clothing-. . . . 
He was able, more or less, to modify it at will. 
. . . He could identify himself to Thomas; he 
could be grasped by the women ; he could, like 
the angels in Gen. xxviii., 29, invest himself with 
apparent garments, and eat and drink before his 
disciples ; [Then why not with apparent flesh 
and bones?] he could enter the invisible in- 
stantaneously ; he could appear under ' another 
form,' could pass through any material impedi- 
ments. . . . After his resurrection as at no 
previous time he seemed often unrecognizable to 
the best acquainted eyes. His ready presence at 
different places evinced his power of invisible 
and instantaneous transference through space at 
will." 

Let it not be objected that if his appearances 



90 NOT A FLESHLY BODY, 

were not in his real fleshly body then they were 
delusions. Not so, at all. His appearances were 
as real and in the same way as the angels at the 
tent of Abraham in the plains of Mamre, or as 
the angels to Lot in Sodom, and for as worthy a 
purpose. Those angels ate, and talked, and ex- 
erted physical strength, yet they were only 
angels in the form of men, if indeed they were 
not truly men, as the record states — some of the 
worthy ones who had lived in earlier years, re- 
turning, as afterwards Moses and Elijah did, to 
be ministering spirits to those heirs of salvation. 
Could not this incorporeal man now "as an 
angel of God " in like manner have assumed 
human shape, and even human flesh and bones 
as he indicated to Thomas ? Even though 
he stood before his disciples clothed in veri- 
table flesh and bones, as we cheerfully admit 
he did, it does not follow that it was the 
identical flesh and bones he had worn before 
death, any more than that the garments he 
appeared in were the identical garments which 
had been divided by lot and otherwise among the 
Roman soldiers. His eating and talking with his 
disciples do not prove that he carried about with 
him in a perpetually strange and unnatural man- 
ner the body which had been buried, and which 
had so certainly, yet so mysteriously, disappeared 
from the tomb. The extract from Dr. Whedon 
above quoted shows that he admits that if it were 
the veritable body it had been thoroughly spirit- 
ualized — deprived of every element of matter, as 
we understand matter, and clothed upon with 
every attribute of spirit, as nearly as we can 
comprehend spirit. In that better day of Scrip- 
ture exegesis which is surely coming, and to- 
wards which the above quoted comment is a 



BUT A SPIRITUAL APPARITION. 91 

long stride as compared with the interpretation 
of former ages, the Christian church will dis- 
cover nothing strange or inconsistent in any of 
the incidents recorded of the risen Saviour. 

There are several circumstances which indi- 
cate that the appearances recorded were not in 
the real fleshly body. In the first place there is 
no case recorded in which the disciples or the 
women recognized him at first. Again, the record 
is almost uniformly in this manner: " He appeared 
first to Mary." "After that he appeared in another 
form." "He appeared unto the eleven." u Ap- 
peared unto Simon." " And he vanished out of. 
their sight."* He is represented as traveling 
rapidly, as entering rooms while the doors were 
shut and retiring in the same way, while it was 
necessary to roll away the stone from the door of 
the sepulchre that the real physical body might 
be removed. We repeat that no part of the 
narrative is consistent with the supposition that 
he "appeared" in his natural fleshly body. Where 
did he keep himself during the repeated interims 
between these "appearances?" Why was he 
seen only by chosen ones ? Even on the occa- 
sion when he challenged inspection he had 
"appeared" suddenly, the doors being shut. 

To suppose that the essential personality of 
the Saviour went at once to paradise, as he had 
promised, and as all do who die in the Lord, and 
that on the morning of the third day the angel, 



* Some persons of average reading seem to regard this vanishing 
as nothing more than the hiding alluded to, John viii., 59. No modern 
commentator of repute so regards it. Lange, on John viii., 59, says : 
"A vanishing out of sight, as in Luke xxiv., 31, is hardly to be thought 
of." Strong says : " Jesus escaped by burying himself in the midst 
of the crowd." Whedon says: "Jesus probably moved away by a 
route which interposed protecting objects." 



92 VIEWS OF THE APOSTLES. 

which had physical strength enough to roll away 
the great stone, had at the same time taken 
charge of the material remains of the Saviour 
and suitably disposed of them, as the body of 
Elijah and that of Moses had been disposed of, 
and that the several interviews were just what 
the evangelists represent them to have been — 
" appearances," sometimes in one form and some- 
times in another, as they tell us — is to remove 
from the narrative inconsistencies and contradic- 
tions which tradition has thrown around it, and 
to make it consistent with itself, and with known 
laws of matter and of spirit. 

In the disappearance of the body from the 
grave, under the circumstances, all was accom- 
plished which the Divine Father had in view by 
its resurrection — an attestation of its mission. 
The facts of that disappearance were so public 
and so well authenticated that no appearance of 
the risen Christ was necessary, except to his dis- 
ciples. The earthquake, and the power which 
felled the soldiers, and the testimony of the 
Roman guards themselves, convinced the Jews 
that it was no trick or fraud practiced by the 
disciples. 

That the disciples understood these visits of the 
Saviour to be just what they call them, " appear- 
ances," is evident not only from the narratives 
of the four evangelists, but from the statement 
of Paul also. In his enumeration of the several 
times of these interviews, he says : " Last of all 
he was seen of me also." How? Certainly not 
in his physical body. Even those whose dogma 
needs the physical body of Christ to have gone 
through so many unnatural and unphysical per- 
formances, that they may have a " model " for 
their bodily resurrection, will not claim this ; 



CHRIST AND LAZARUS. 93 

for, according to their theory, that body had 
been spiritualized and glorified, and to have it 
now assume human form is all that we claim 
for Christ, as a spirit, on these occasions. Evi- 
dently, the appearance to Paul thus referred to 
was distinct from the vision which he had when, 
" in the body or out of the body," he was caught 
up to see the unutterable things of the future 
life, and was in like manner with the other ap- 
pearances, and for the same purpose — to com- 
municate important information in order to con- 
firm him in the faith of the Gospel.* 

Again, how different the account given of the 
risen Saviour and the risen Lazarus ! Lazarus 
was seen by the whole people, foes as well as 
friends of Jesus, and the enemies of Christ 
counseled how they might put him to death also, 
when they should kill the Saviour. The narra- 
tive speaks of Lazarus as a living man, moving 
among the people as any other man ; but there 
is not the least intimation of any such a man in 
the person of the risen Christ. He is utterly 
unknown to his enemies, and known only to a 
very few of his friends, and to them only on 
occasions chosen by him, not by them.f 

* " He here, no doubt, speaks of Christ's appearing to him on the 
way to Damascus." — yoseph Benson. 

" It is evident, from the history of Saul's conversion, that Jesus 
Christ did appear to him." — Dr. Adam Clarke. 

\ We here take the liberty of quoting a few paragraphs from the 
book " Credo," already alluded to, as showing that some of the 
sentiments above expressed are not merely the vagaries of an eccen- 
tric mind, and, therefore, to be dismissed with a dignified, pooh ! 
pooh ! but that men of recognized scholarship and high official posi- 
tion are abandoning the grooves of old exposition on this subject. 
Dr. Townsend, the author, is one of the most esteemed teachers in 
the Methodist Theological School at Boston, and, notwithstanding 
invectives have been hurled at him by less progressive thinkers, he 
is retained in a position best calculated to enable him to unsettle old 



94 DR. TOWN SEND. 

beliefs, and introduce new interpretations of the Scripture. If this 
does not give the sanction of that church to such opinions, it at least 
indicates the dawn of that day of Christian liberality which no 
longer puts men in theological straight-jackets, and requires a pro- 
nunciation of a given Shibboleth as a condition of fraternal recog- 
nition : 

" The argument for the resurrection of the old body, particle for 
particle, is also supported, it is claimed, by the fact that Christ's 
natural body was the one raised from the tomb. 

" Two suppositions are legitimately deduced from Christ's literal 
resurrection : either that it was designed to be a seal of his commis- 
sion, a manifest miracle, to confirm the world of his divinity, to reas- 
sure the wavering faith of the disciples, and, being witnessed by more 
than five hundred different persons, to have vast influence in spread- 
ing Christianity during the first century, or else it was designed to 
be an exact type of our own resurrection. 

" Which of these two suppositions is the more reasonable ? Do 
the Scriptures by word or hint suggest that Christ's resurrection was 
a type of ours ? Can his resurrection, in any proper sense, be an 
exact type ? Were the most important conditions of such a resur- 
rection fulfilled by him ? He was but three days in the grave, while 
we must slumber there for ages. He did not see corruption, while 
we are to become dust and ashes. But even if this difficulty could 
be removed — though it can not — would it not seem far more reason- 
able, and infinitely more grand, to look upon our Saviour's resurrec- 
tion as the seal of his divinity, and the first fruits, not of the resur- 
rection, but of them that slept ? Where, then, is Christ's physical 
body ? it maybe asked. Did it ascend to heaven? Did not the 
disciples witness its ascension ? Is he not there to-day ? Flesh and 
blood are not there. ' Five bleeding wounds he bears ' is Watts' 
poetry, not Paul's Letter to the Corinthians. Christ's glorified body 
was not the body shown to Thomas. Save at the transfiguration, it 
was not seen by any of the disciples until after the ascension. It 
was then seen. Stephen saw it, crowned with dazzling splendor, on 
the day of his martyrdom. Paul saw it above the glory of the sun, 
on the road to Damascus. John saw it in Patmos. Great multi- 
tudes of dying Christians have seen it. Nay, we believe the valley 
is dark and lonely to him only who knows not Christ. But this 
glorious body is not precisely the one which walked to Emmaus, or 
met Mary at the tomb. Where is that body? We do not know 
where it is. The record says nothing about it, and beyond the record 
we can not go. We might say that the fleshly covering was annihi- 
lated, or that it underwent a gradual transformation, or was cast off, 
and the gross materials flung back to earth, but it is only safe to say 
that he has a glorious body, which is now the type of our resurrec- 
tion body, without flesh, without blood. . . May we not, then, con- 
clude that Christ's resurrection was designed for a seal of his min- 
istry, rather than an exact type of our resurrection?" — Credo, page 307. 



NEW INTERPRETATIONS. 95 

We add, parenthetically, that, though neither Dr. Townsend nor 
Dr. Whedon adopts fully our exposition, they both repudiate the old 
notion, and by that much at least prepare the way for the adoption 
of a more rational and scriptural theory. They each go as far as 
it is prudent for them to go, seeing the official relation which 
they sustain to the dogma of *a general resurrection of some kind at 
the end of the world, though on that subject they differ radically 
from each other, and each from the common opinion. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

The Teachings of the Apostles on the Resurrection. 

WE ought to find the doctrine of the future 
general resurrection of the bodies of men 
in the sermons of the Apostles, if they ever be- 
lieved or taught any such thing. Let us care- 
fully examine the few specimen sermons which 
have come down to us. While in them we shall 
find abundance of Jesus and the Resurrection, we 
will not find one word or syllable which can be 
properly construed into that figment of dogmatic 
theology which is commonly known as the gen- 
eral resurrection. 

In the 1 8th verse of the seventeenth chapter of 
the Acts, we find a statement of the impression 
which Paul's preaching made upon certain Gre- 
cian philosophers at Athens, and they accused him 
of being a setter-forth of strange gods, and there- 
fore the introducer of a new religion. The fea- 
ture of his discourse which was most striking to 
them was that he preached Jesus and the resur- 
rection. They demanded an explanation of this 
and he proceeded to give it, first by a reference 
to their own beliefs and poets, and then, lift- 
ing them higher by their acknowledged views 
of the true God, he insisted that such a God 
could not be made of silver or gold, after man's 
device. This true God, said he, has heretofore 
winked at the times of ignorance, but now he 
commandeth all men everywhere to repent, " for 



PAULS ATHENIAN ARGUMENT. 97 

he hath appointed a day [not necessarily just 
24 hours long] in which he will judge the world 
in righteousness by that man whom he hath or- 
dained." "How shall we know that? What 
assurance can be given of such a truth?" the 
Athenian was ready to inquire. To which Paul 
replies : " Of this he hath given assurance unto 
all men, in that he hath raised him from the 
dead." That this is the resurrection which caused 
the talk, and is alluded to in the 18th verse, is 
clear from what follows in the next verse : " And 
when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, 
some mocked." Of what dead? So far as the 
record states, or any inference can be drawn 
from it, there had been no reference to any dead 
but the dead Christ. Even if these scoffers 
should have alleged that he taught a general 
resurrection of all the dead, or any number of the 
dead, that would be no proof that he did so 
teach, for they had just lied against him in charg- 
ing that he taught that Jesus was a king, opposed 
to Caesar (verse 7). 

But it is not plain that even their language 
can be tortured to mean all this. He had intro- 
duced the resurrection of Christ only as an as- 
surance of his right to judge the world. He refers 
to the same resurrection in Romans (i., 14) for 
the same purpose : " He was made of the seed 
of Abraham according to the flesh, but by his 
resurrection from the dead he was declared to be the 
Son of God with power. Again, in the same 
spirit, and for the same purpose, he refers to this 
great fact when explaining Christ to his Hebrew 
brethren at Antioch: "We declare to you glad 
tidings ^ . . how that God hath fulfilled the same 
to us in that he hath raised up Jesus again." 
Acts xiii., 33. 



98 THE HOPE, AND 

Is there any future general resurrection, or 
any other future resurrection, in any of these? 
Language could not more definitely fix it, than 
as it is here limited to the resurrection of the 
dead Christ, and this is not argued, nor even 
asserted, but it is alluded to, as a well known 
fact, only as an " assurance " that Jesus had been 
appointed by the Father to " judge the world in 
righteousness." 

In the twenty-sixth chapter we have another 
sermon in which this favorite theme is discussed. 
The sixth verse reads thus : " And now I stand 
and am judged for the hope of the promise made 
of God unto the fathers." What promise ? Cer- 
tainly not the promise of a future general resur- 
rection, for no such a promise was ever made. 
Take your reference Bible, and you will be 
pointed to such passages as these: 2 Sam., vii., 
12, " When thy days shall be fulfilled, and thou 
shalt sleep with thy fathers, I will set up thy 
seed after thee." Ps. cxxxii., 1 1 : " The Lord 
hath sworn unto David, of the fruit of thy body 
I will set upon thy throne." Isaiah vii., 14, " Be- 
hold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and 
shall call his name Emmanuel " — and much more 
of like import. 

This was the promise made of God to the 
Fathers, and when we read these promises we 
do not so much wonder that the Jews expected 
a temporal deliverer; and when we find the 
Apostles so often referring to this hope, so long 
after the death of Christ, we will not wonder 
that they tinged their faith still with a hope of 
his return during their own lives, or, at furthest, 
during that generation, to fulfill this promise, as 
we shall see by and by. 

" It is for the sake of this hope, King Agrippa, 



• THE RESURRECTION. 99 

that I am accused of the Jews," said the Apostle. 
But Christ had died ; how, then, could this 
hope yet remain ? Why, it depended upon his 
resurrection from the dead ; hence the con- 
stant coupling of this fact with the hope, and it 
was this which gave the offense. His appeal to 
Agrippa's knowledge of the true God, though a 
Gentile, has no other significance than this. He 
asks : " Why should it be thought a thing in- 
credible with you that God should raise the 
dead?" What dead? Certainly not the bodies 
of all the dead, at some remote future time, but 
the dead Christ. True enough, the Greek adjec- 
tive is plural, but that does not prove that he 
meant to include the dead bodies of all men. 
It is only a common form of stating a general 
proposition, which may be applicable to only one 
person. Thus, we may be speaking of the 
exercise of some executive pardon which ex- 
cites surprise. Should we reply by asking: 
" Do you think it strange that the Governor 
should pardon criminals?" we should not ex- 
pect to be understood that the Governor had 
pardoned all the criminals, or that he ever would. 
The question would be just as appropriate if he 
had never pardoned but the one, and never was 
expected to pardon another. 

Read Paul's touching allusion to his own per- 
sonal experience, beginning at a time when he 
was no more of a believer than Agrippa, and 
ending with a statement of the doctrine of his 
several sermons, in this language : " Having ob- 
tained help of God, I continued unto this day, 
witnessing to both small and great, saying none 
other things than these which the prophets and 
Moses did say should come : That Christ should 
suffer, and that he should be the first that should rise 



100 PHARISEES AND SADDUCEES. 

from the dead^ and should show light unto the 
people and to the Gentiles." 

We have here Paul's own declaration that he 
never preached a future resurrection of the 
bodies of men, for he preached none other things 
than those here enumerated. Again, take your 
reference Bible and look up the sayings of Moses 
and the prophets, from which it is assumed that 
Paul preached a future general resurrection, and 
you will find no such resurrection in or near 
them. His appeal to Agrippa, a Gentile, as a be- 
liever in the prophets, is a beautiful specimen 
of eloquence, but utterly meaningless if he had 
had any reference to such a doctrine, because 
that doctrine is not in the prophets. 

It will be observed that this final statement 
of the manner and matter of his preaching is the 
summing up of his defense, as it had been made 
several times in the course of his trial, which had 
now lasted over two years, and which had begun 
before the Chief Captain (chap, xxi., 37). Before 
the Council, consisting of both Sadducees and 
Pharisees (chap, xxiii., 6), Paul states that he is 
called in question for the hope and the resurrec- 
tion of the dead. What that hope and that 
resurrection were we have already seen. He 
evidently uses the word resurrection here in its 
generic sense, just as Christ did in his conversa- 
tion with the Sadducees, as intending to antago- 
nize the doctrine of that sect ; and the author of 
the record so applies and so explains it, for he 
tells us just what the Sadducees meant by their 
creed : "no resurrection " [no future life], for they 
believed in " neither angel nor spirit " ; but the 
Pharisees believed in a resurrection, that is in a 
future life, for they " confessed both," angel and 
spirit. 



PAULS CONSTANT THEME. 101 

He repeats the same, substantially, before 
Felix (chap, xxiv., 14): "I confess that after the 
way which they call heresy, so worship I the 
God of my fathers, believing all things which 
were written in the law and the prophets, and 
have hope towards God, which they themselves 
allow, that there shall be a resurrection of the 
dead, both of the just and the unjust." 

Here is a beautiful coupling of his faith in 
the resurrection, that is, in a future life, with the 
doctrines of Christ as they had been foretold by 
the prophets ; how he should suffer and rise from 
the dead. Using the word resurrection in the 
sense that Christ used it when disputing with the 
Sadducees, as referring to the future life, and as 
it is everywhere used in the Bible, except when 
specifically applied to Christ, he gives no coun- 
tenance to the doctrines of the reanimation of 
dead bodies at some far future time. 

Putting the accusation and the defense to- 
gether, we have this statement: In chapter xxiv., 
21, he says: "Touching the resurrection of the 
dead I am called in question." In explaining 
how he preached the resurrection of the dead, he 
informs us, two years afterwards, in the twenty- 
sixth chapter, that it was by saying "none other 
things . . . than that Christ should suffer and 
that he should be the first that should rise from 
the dead." 

At another time we find Paul preaching this 
same resurrection to the Thessalonians. The re- 
port of that sermon will be found in the seven- 
teenth chapter, 3d verse: "That Christ must needs 
have suffered and risen again from the dead." 
No general resurrection at the last day here ! 

In the twenty-fifth chapter we have a scrap of 
history such as would be considered very valuable 



102 PETER'S DOCTRINE 

in any legal investigation where circumstantial 
evidence might be needed; (though, in fact, we 
are not in need of mere circumstantial evidence, 
having direct proof enough that the resurrection 
which was preached by Paul referred wholly to 
Christ, except where the context plainly shows 
a reference to the doctrine of the anastasis, or 
immortality, as contrasted with the annihilation- 
ism of the Sadducees.) 

Paul had been before Festus, accused by the 
Jews of many grievous things. During his pre- 
liminary trial, as is well said by Dr. Whedon in 
his notes on the 19th verse: " Jesus and the resur- 
rection had evidently been debated." The im- 
pression made upon the mind of Festus by Paul's 
method of preaching this doctrine is thus given 
in his statement of the charge brought against 
Paul. " They had certain questions against him 
of their own superstition, and of one Jesus 
which was dead, whom Paul affirmed to be alive" 
Here we have, in a semi-official form, that in 
preaching the resurrection he preached that 
Jesus was alive. Nothing more. Not one word 
about a general resurrection. 

We have thus followed Paul through his ser- 
mons and found not a shadow of a general 
resurrection at the last day. Let us turn to 
Peter's sermons, a few of which are preserved. 

On the day of Pentecost he says : " Him, being 
delivered by the determined counsel and fore- 
knowledge of God, ye have taken, and with 
wicked hands, have crucified and slain, whom 
God hath raised up. (Acts ii, 23.) 

In the thirty-second verse he repeats the 
same doctrine, thus : " This Jesus hath God raised 
up." 

In the third chapter, at the fourteenth verse, 



THE SAME AS PAULS. 103 

he recurs to his favorite theme, Jesus and the 
resurrection, in this manner : " But ye denied the 
holy one and the just, and killed the Prince of 
Life whom God hath raised from the dead." 

In the twenty-sixth verse he preached the 
resurrection of the dead in a manner which grieved 
the Sadducees, and they laid hands on him and 
put him in prison on that account. And here is 
the sermon: " God having raised up Jesus sent him 
to bless you." There is not a word of allusion to 
any other resurrection than that of Christ in this 
sermon or in any that preceded it. 

In his defense, which followed (chap, iv., 10), 
he does not apologize and say that they misun- 
derstood him and therefore misrepresented him, 
but he defiantly repeats the doctrine of the resur- 
rection of the dead in these words: "Be it known 
unto you all, and to all the people of Israel, that 
by the name of Jesus Christ, whom ye crucified, 
whom God raised from the dead, by him doth this 
man stand before you whole." 

In the fourth chapter, at the twent)^-third 
verse, we have a summary of the preaching of 
the apostolic band, and its results, in these signifi- 
cant words: "And with great power gave the 
apostles witness of the resurrection of the Lord 
Jesus Christ, and great grace was on them all." 

Subsequently, having been released from pris- 
on by the ministry of an angel, the apostles were 
found preaching in the temple, "all the words 
of this life." Surely here we shall find the resur- 
rection of the bodies of all men, at some future 
time, as connected with the pattern which Christ 
set in his resurrection, as a fulfillment of the 
pledge which the resurrection of Christ gave, for 
they preached " all the words of this life." But 
here is all that the historian thought it necessary 



104 CHRIST AND IMMORTALITY. 

to record: "The God of our fathers raised up Jesus, 
whom ye slew and hanged upon the tree. Him 
hath God exalted to be a prince and a Saviour, 
to give repentance to Israel and the remission 
of sins." 

This, then, was apostolic preaching as shown 
in the book of the Acts. They preached repent- 
ance and the remission of sins, through the name 
of the Lord Jesus, and alluded constantly to the 
resurrection of Christ as an " assurance" that 
God had constituted him a prince and a Saviour, 
never once speaking of the resurrection of the 
bodies of all men as any part of the scheme of 
salvation. They speak of the future life of man 
as connected with the sacrifice of Christ — a resur- 
rection — a future life of the just and the unjust. 
Enough, also, is recorded to show that they still 
expected a fulfillment of " the promise to the 
fathers," a restoration of the nation of the Jews 
to prosperity and power — a lingering Jewish 
error which tinged all their writings and ser- 
mons, as we shall see in the proper place. 



CHAPTER IX. 

Christ's Direct Teaching of the Time and Mode of Man's 
Immortality. 

HAVING thus examined the matter and man- 
ner of apostolic preaching, we recur to 
the more direct teaching of the Saviour on this 
subject to show that these disciples did not de- 
part from rightful authority in attributing human 
immortality to the merits of Christ. It is only 
through Christ that man lives — Christ the resur- 
rection and the life. 

On the occasion of the miracle which healed 
the impotent man, recorded in the fifth chapter 
of John, the Saviour more distinctly declares 
his character and mission than he ever had before, 
if not more distinctly than at any other time 
whatever, giving additional offense to the Jews, 
who had been outraged by his healing on the 
Sabbath. His announcement of his divinity is 
conclusive, unless we assume that he willingly 
left them in error concerning the import of his 
language. His account of himself is about this: 
" Whatsoever the Father doeth, the Son doeth 
likewise. I have healed a sick man, and ye mar- 
vel. There are greater works committed to the 
Son than this. As the Father raiseth up the 
dead and quickeneth them, even so the Son 
quickeneth whom he will. He that heareth my 
words and believeth on Him that sent me, hath 



106 CHRIST'S PHRASEOLOGY 

everlasting life, and shall not come into condem- 
nation because he hath passed from death unto 
life. Verily, verily, I say unto you, that the 
hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall 
hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that 
hear shall live." 

In the twenty-eighth verse the expression is 
somewhat different, chiefly in using the word 
graves, and in omitting the phrase now is. The 
usual method of disposing of these passages is to 
make the twenty-fifth verse refer to a spiritual 
resurrection, but the twenty-eighth to the general 
resurrection of bodies at the end of the world. 
Dr. Whedon perhaps as correctly expresses the 
opinion of those who find a bodily resurrection 
here as any other writer, when he says: " All that 
are in their graves. It is universal, ALL. It is 
bodily, and of the same body that was buried. 
The very bodies that are laid in the graves are 
the bodies that arise. The very body that dies 
is the body that revives." This is the germ 
thought, the central idea of the doctrine of a 
bodily resurrection — " The very body that dies is 
the body that revives," and this passage, more 
than all other passages of Scripture, is relied 
upon to prove it. 

Let us examine it a moment. The language 
is: "All that are in their graves shall hear his 
voice and shall come forth." But this does not 
say all the bodies that are in the graves shall come 
forth. Whatever it refers to is predicated of the 
entire man. It is repugnant to every sentiment of 
Christianity, and no less to half-enlightened 
heathenism, to locate our departed ones in the 
grave, and it is sheer pettifogging to say that be- 
cause only the body goes into the grave, there- 
fore, Christ referred only to the body. Will any 



EXAMINED. 107 

intelligent Christian say that if Christ were speak- 
ing- of Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob he would 
locate them in their graves? When he spoke of 
them he spoke of them as living, not as dead. If 
Christ had intended to teach the doctrine of a resur- 
rection of bodies he would not have spoken of the 
entire man as being in the grave, but would have 
said, as he nowhere says or intimates : that the 
bodies which are in the graves shall hear his 
voice and shall come forth. Again : whatever* or 
whoever are here intended could hear. Dead 
bodies cannot hear any more than rocks can hear, 
and it is forcing a meaning upon Christ's words 
that is unauthorized to say that when he chooses 
he can make rocks or dust hear. The simple nat- 
ural truth is that he uses the Avords " in the 
graves " just as we use the words often. We say 
"he has gone to his grave," or "he is in his 
grave," meaning only that he is dead. Hence 
the discovery that quite another thing is meant 
by the 28th verse from that implied in the 25th 
is wholly gratuitous and unauthorized. This is 
further evident, because, if the words are not 
used in this sense, none are to be raised unless 
they have been literally buried. 

But even if the language were as emphatic as 
the language of Dr. Whedon above quoted, and 
taught a bodily resurrection as unmistakably, it 
would be inadmissible to prove such a doctrine 
as that of a reanimation of the scattered dust of 
the millions who have died in the ages past, and 
the millions yet to die in the millions of years yet 
to come, by this one Scripture, especially when it 
stands as this does, in the midst of such Script- 
ures as these : " He that believeth on me, out of 
his belly shall flow rivers of living water." Why 
may we reject the plain grammatical meaning of 



108 THE FALSENESS OF LITERALISM. 

this text, which teaches such a physical impossi- 
bility, and yet must accept as literal that which 
refers to the dead, even supposing that he refers 
to bodies only ? This is not a whit more imprac- 
ticable or improbable than that. The only differ^ 
ence is that we know this is not true, by daily 
observation ; we are not allowed to exercise our 
senses, or to reason on the other, because we are 
told it is outside the realm of reason, and purely 
within the realm of faith. 

Again : why may we refuse to accept the lit- 
eral meaning of this other passage, all in close 
connection with the one on which so much stress 
is laid : " Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of 
Man and drink his blood ye have no life in you. 
Whoso eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood 
hath eternal life, and I will raise him up at the 
last day," and not be permitted to suggest that 
the former may have some other than its literal 
meaning, — even if the Saviour had said : " I will 
raise up the bodies which are in the graves," 
which he does not ? This verse just quoted has 
also resurrection in it — resurrection at the last 
day at that, but it is a resurrection which cannot 
take place unless we eat the flesh and drink the 
blood of Christ. The Papists find transubstantia- 
tion in this text, Protestants do not. The Papists 
prove their doctrine by it with much less circum- 
locution than the doctrine of a bodily resurrec- 
tion can be proven from the former. 

By the exercise of that plain common sense 
which educes from the hyperbolic passages we 
have just quoted some of the most cheering and 
instructive doctrines of the Bible, these two com- 
panion texts, and several of like import scattered 
among these figurative declarations of the Sa- 
viour, can be made to harmonize with the other 



SIGNIFICANCE OF THE PRESENT TENSE. 109 

teachings of the word, and to convey truths of 
the utmost moment ; but a bodily resurrection 
is in neither of them. 

Whatever is predicated of one is of the other. 
The phrase, In the graves means the same as the 
dead, and nothing more. What then is taught? 
It is something that now is. The use of the pres- 
ent tense is significant The Father raiseth ; the 
Father quickeneth ; the Father judgeth; he that 
heareth; believeth ; is passed ; hath committed. The 
import of the whole is that, since the Father hath 
committed all judgment to the Son, and the Son 
hath life in himself, from this time forward the 
dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and 
they that hear shall live, and he will exercise his 
authority as judge to separate the righteous from 
the wicked, just as, from the beginning until now, 
the Father hath quickened and judged. 

Unquestionably, the raising up of the dead, 
the future life, and all that is implied in this mar- 
velous demonstration of power, was something 
already begun, of which the curing of the im- 
potent man was only an evidence of the right 
and power. Instead of intending to teach what 
is sometimes claimed of this conversation, it is 
really aimed at the prevailing materialism of the 
times, just as his conversations with the Saddu- 
cees and with Martha were. The occasion was 
different, and the style is different, but the lesson 
is the same, and it is consistent with the general 
teaching of the Bible on the subject of man's 
immortality. The dying man hears the voice 
of the Son of God and lives; that is, immor- 
tality is through Christ, and now, not untold 
ages hence. To Martha he expressed this same 
truth when he said : " He that believeth on me 
shall never die." To these Jews, on this occa- 



110 IMMORTALITY ALREADY BEGUN. 

sion, he says : " He that believeth on him that 
sent me hath everlasting life." 

The import of his account of himself, given 
in the sixth chapter of John, is precisely the 
same as here. " The bread of God is he which 
cometh down from heaven and giveth life to the 
world. I am the bread of life. And this is the 
will of him that sent me, that every one that 
seeth the Son and believeth on him may have 
everlasting life, and I will raise him up at the last 
day." If what had preceded this expression 
had not definitely fixed the meaning of the phrase, 
" at the last day," as referring to the time of 
the man's death, what follows (verse 47) does : 
" Verily, Verily, I say unto you, he that believeth 
on me hath everlasting life." But, lest their tradi 
tional ideas of a future general resurrection 
might rob this doctrine of its beauty and force, 
he repeats — v. 50 : " This is the bread which 
cometh down from heaven, that a man may eat 
thereof, and not die. ... If any man eat of this 
bread, he shall live forever. . . . Whoso eateth 
my flesh and drinketh my blood hath eternal life, 
and I will raise him up at the last day."* (I will 
give him life when he comes to die.) And yet 
again, as though he would repeat this truth so 
that it never could be forgotten or misunder- 



* The absurdity of predicating a closing up of terrestrial things 
upon this and similar phrases is manifest to any one who will explain 
Scripture by Scripture, with a purpose to reach the truth, instead of 
building up a dogma. Paul defines the end of the world in Hebrews 
ix., 26 : " In the end of the world hath he appeared." He does the 
same, i Cor., x., n : "For our admonition, upon whom*the ends of 
the world have come." Peter, Acts ii., 17, defines the last days to be 
the days in which he lived ; and Paul, Heb. i., 2, says " in these last 
days he hath spoken by his Son." There is not a well defined in- 
stance in which either phrase refers to the closing up of earth's 
history. 



DEA TH AND HADES. Ill 

stood, he adds (v. 57) : " As the living Father 
hath sent me, and I live by the Father, so he that 
eateth me, even he shall live by me. ... He 
that eateth this bread shall live forever. . . . 
It is the spirit that quickeneth. . . . The 
words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and 
they are life." 

One other passage, often quoted to prove the 
doctrine of a bodily resurrection, is found in 
Rev. xx., 13: " And the sea gave up the dead 
which were in it, and death and hell [Hades] de- 
livered up the dead which were in them." But 
this can not be made to even allude to a bodily 
resurrection, without according to it its proper 
place in Biblical literature, that of high-wrought 
oriental poetry, and then as a proof text it wholly 
disappears. 

The usual method of appropriating it is to 
assume that it refers to a general resurrection 
and then to prove that it refers to the bodies of 
men, " because neither Christian nor heathen ever 
believed that the souls of men go into the sea." 
Such expositors seem to wholly overlook the 
second clause of the text, which predicates the 
same thing of Hades, for it too delivers up the 
dead which are in it. We may ask quite as dog- 
matically : Does any one, Christian or heathen, 
ever believe that the bodies of men go into Hades ? 
If universal belief is worth any thing in the first 
clause, it is equally valuable in the second. If 
dead means bodies when coming from the sea, 
why does it not mean bodies when coming from 
Hades ? It is an unwarrantable species of argu- 
mentation to assume a doctrine, and then prove 
it by thus making the same word mean such dis- 
similar things in the same sentence. It means 
just what it says in each case — the dead, not the 



112 CONSISTENT INTERPRETATIONS. 

bodies as such, nor the souls as such, but the dead, 
and its meaning will be easily ascertained when 
we find the meaning of the other poetic language 
used in its immediate connection. 

In the sensuous ages which found in this poem 
a literal great white throne, a literal recording 
angel, who kept a literal account with every man, 
in literal books ; and that at a literal judgment 
these literal books were literally opened; that 
there was a literal camp of literal saints, and that 
a literal Gog and Magog surrounded the literal 
camp of these literal saints ; and that there was a 
literal battle, and that the whole ended in locking 
up the discomfited in a literal lake of literal fire 
and literal brimstone — in such an age it was 
bearable that, as a part of the things here liter- 
ally described, there should be a literal resur- 
rection of the dead from the sea, and from death, 
and from Hades; but even then it was not 
allowable to prove a bodily resurrection unless 
the body went to Hades also, for it, too, gave 
up exactly what the sea gave up — nothing more 
and nothing less. But why should the lake, the 
fire, the brimstone, the great white throne, the 
camp, and the battle all be dismissed by intelli- 
gent expositors from the catalogue of literal 
things, and yet the resurrection and the judg- 
ment be retained ; and then the text be mutilated 
to prove a resurrection of bodies in one clause, 
and a resurrection of souls or something else in 
another, though the same word is used in both? 
It cannot be allowed. There is no resurrection 
in the text at all, much less a resurrection of 
bodies, at the end of the world. 

But if this view of the subject did not re- 
move the text from any possible service in proof 
of a bodily resurrection, the fact that the sea 



THE DEAD IN THE SEA. 113 

holds, at any one time, a very insignificant frac- 
tion of the bodies of men, should indicate that so 
general and universal an event as the supposed 
final resurrection could be very imperfectly 
taught by such language. Allow that all who 
are drowned in any and all waters, whose bodies 
are not rescued and buried, and all who are bur- 
ied in "the deep, deep sea," remain in the waters, 
it would still be too insignificant a fraction of 
the whole to demand such prominence ; but the 
bodies which fall into the water, whether river, 
lake or ocean, remain in water but a short time, 
even in a disorganized state. If the monsters 
of the deep do not devour them, and thus give 
the matter which once composed those bodies 
new forms, and start it out on ten thousand subse- 
quent destinies, the action of the waves brings the 
decomposed matter to the surface, and light, and 
heat, and winds, and clouds bear it to the neigh- 
boring forests and fields, just as all other gaseous 
matter is borne, and it becomes a part of trees 
and plants, the same as though it had perished on 
the land and remained unburied, or buried — for 
the deepest graves of only a quarter of a century 
contain but little that can be recognized as the 
dust once animated by a living man. 

The sea gives up the dead bodies which are in 
it every day and every hour, by the law which 
God has ordained. Of all that is given to it, it 
retains nothing for any such final surrender as 
the theory ol a general resurrection requires. 



CHAPTER X. 

THE ARGUMENT OF THE FIFTEENTH CHAPTER OF FIRST 
CORINTHIANS. 

THE most elaborate and conclusive discussion 
of the mode of man's immortality, except in 
the conversations of Christ with the Sadducees, 
and with the enraged Jews, is found in the fif- 
teenth chapter of First Corinthians. The immedi- 
ate occasion of this was that some had been teach- 
ing that there is no resurrection of the dead. Paul 
does not allege that any one has been denying the 
doctrine of a future general resurrection, but they 
have denied that mode of immortality which the 
Saviour alluded to when he spoke of the continu- 
ous existence of the patriarchs ; and Paul uses the 
word "resurrection " in the sense that Christ did, 
as applicable to the after-life which those patri- 
archs were already enjoying when God spoke of 
them to Moses. 

This is the same heresy as that alluded to in 
2d Tim. ii., 18. "Saying that the resurrection is 
past." It was that narrow view of the Christian 
religion which limited its benefits to this life only, 
and to the Hebrew people chiefly if not exclusive- 
ly ; a view entertained by nearly all Hebrew con- 
verts until after the destruction of the temple, 
some four years after this letter to Timothy. 
Paul himself was not wholly free from it until this 
last imprisonment, as we show elsewhere, though 



MATERIALISTIC ERRORS. 115 

his faith was more comprehensive from the begin- 
ning- than that of any other apostle ; a fact which 
often led him into sharp controversies with the 
Judaizing teachers. Hymeneus, and Alexander, 
and Philetus, had given him much trouble on this 
score, and he turned two of them over to Satan, 
that they might learn better, (i Tim. i., 20,) and 
prayed rather an equivocal prayer for Alexander, 
(2 Tim. iv., 14,) showing the depth of his grief on 
account of their persistent denial of the doctrine 
of a future life through Christ. 

The first part of this chapter (1 Cor. xv.,) is an 
argument in favor of a future life based upon the 
sacrifice and merits of Christ, that life whose resur- 
rection was an "assurance" that God had ordained 
him for this purpose, (Acts xvii., 13,) with no refer- 
ence whatever to the mode of attaining. The latter 
part is devoted to the mode, in answer to the fool 
who insisted on knowing with what body they 
would come, repeating, substantially, the mate- 
rialistic objections of the Sadducees. In his 
answer, as we shall see, he uses almost every 
possible form of speech to assure the objector 
that he will not live in a material, fleshly 
body, but that he will live, notwithstanding; for 
Christ lives, and because he lives we shall live 
also. 

He introduces his argument for man's immor- 
tality by referring to his method of preaching 
when, six years before that time, he established 
the church at Corinth. This reference to his 
manner of preaching shows that his theme was 
the same as when preaching among his own coun- 
trymen : " Jesus and the resurrection." "I deliv- 
ered unto you first of all, that Christ died for our 
sins, according to the Scriptures, and that he was 
buried, and that he rose again the third day, accord- 



116 A PRESENT RESURRECTION. 

ing to the Scriptures." One cannot fail to notice 
the similarity of this account with that given to 
Agrippa : " Saying none other things than those 
which Moses and the prophets did say should 
come: that Christ should suffer, and that he 
should be the first that sliould rise from the dead.'' 1 

Only in one thing did his sermons in Greece 
differ from his sermons in Judaea. Here he never 
alluded to the evidences of Christ's resurrection ; 
there he details the manner by which they be- 
came satisfied of its truth, but in neither account 
does he give any intimation that he ever preached 
a future general resurrection of the bodies of 
men. 

Proceeding with his argument, he says : 
" Now, if Christ be preached that he rose from 
the dead, how say some among you that there is 
no resurrection of the dead?" (Not that there 
will be no resurrection, as would be proper if he 
had referred to a future general resurrection.) 
" But if there be no resurrection of the dead (no 
future life), then is Christ not risen, and our 
preaching is vain, and ye are yet in your sins, and 
they that have fallen asleep in Christ are 
perished." 

This is a summing up of the terrible failure 
which would have befallen Christianity but for 
the " assurance " which the Father gave of the ac- 
ceptability of the sacrifice of Christ, by raising 
him from the dead. 

Having thus settled the preliminary fact that 
Christ had risen, he proceeds to say that in rising 
he became the first fruits of them that slept. 
Among the children of Israel the " first fruits " 
was an offering to God of the first sheaves of the 
harvest, the first grapes of the vintage, and the 
first of everything, including the first-born of the 



THE FIRST FRUITS. 117 

family or of the herd. It was a contribution to 
the expenses of religious worship ; the first-born of 
the family and of unclean beasts being redeemed 
by something which could be made serviceable as 
food for the priesthood. Its significance was that 
God had the first claim upon their increase, as 
well as that the first was generally the best of 
its kind. The requirement is the antithesis of 
that which forbade the offering of the lame, and 
the deformed, and the imperfect, — the giving, 
grudgingly, after every other claim was satis- 
fied, an offering to God. Just in what 
sense the apostle uses the figure here is not 
known. Quite likely it is in the sense which was 
most common at that time, as the best of its kind. 
Thus he uses it, Romans viii., 23 : " But we have 
the first fruits of the spirit," — the best gifts of the 
spirit, as the context clearly shows. James, chap- 
ter i., 18, uses it in the same sense when he calls 
Christians "a kind of first fruits of his crea- 
tures." 

It may be equivalent to the phrase in Acts 
xxvi., 33 : " The first that should rise from the 
dead," and it may mean that Christ was the first 
to rise from the dead with such public demonstra- 
tions as to confirm the truth of an after life. How 
public and convincing these were, he enumerates 
in the beginning of his argument. In Colossians 
i., 18, he calls Christ " the beginning, the first-born 
from the dead," and the same idea is used, Rev. i., 
5, where he is called "the first-begotten of the 
dead." But, in whatever sense it may be used, 
there is no authority in the Bible for the interpre- 
tation which uses it in the sense of an earnest or 
pledge, or an example or pattern. The latter it 
could not be, for his body saw no corruption, and 
if the appearances which are recorded were his 



118 FIRST FRUITS. 

real fleshly body, it was all deformed by the 
wounds of the crucifixion.* 

The entire argument of the first part of this 
chapter is to show that the resurrection of the 
dead, that anastasis which implies living hereafter, 
is a fundamental doctrine of Christianity, and that 
the Corinthians had been so instructed, and had 
so believed. To deny this doctrine now was to 
renounce everything which appertained to the 

* A writer of some celebrity, in the Methodist Quarterly for 1873, 
p. 638 gives the best argument for a bodily resurrection, predicated 
upon " the first fruits," that we have ever met. It is this : " If the 
resurrection of Christ bears the same relation to the masses as does 
the first sheaf to the harvest, the work is sure ; for the first sheaf 
could not be gathered till the harvest had reached a point that placed 
the whole beyond accident. The harvest was as certain as ' the first 
fruits of them that slept.'" This is slightly reasoning in a circle; 
proving the resurrection of all bodies by the certainty of the harvest 
after the first sheaf, and then proving the certainty of the harvest by 
the certainty of the " first fruits of them that slept." But as it is 
the best that can be done with the text we do not complain. The 
italics are the author's, indicating the strong point of his argument. 
Then, alas for the masses ! The argument may be conclusive to 
those who never saw a harvest gathered, and it must be, for this is 
the usual way of arguing from " the first fruits, 1 ' whereas, there is 
not a farmer's boy fifteen years of age who does not know that often 
after gathering " the first sheaf" most of the entire harvest is lost 
by some of the many foes from which it is never safe until securely 
housed. 

If the resurrection of the bodies of men can be proven by nothing 
better than this (and it is an argument with which its advocates usual- 
ly begin and end), then nothing is more contingent and uncertain. A 
farmer would laugh at a city philosopher who, passing as " the first 
sheaf" was gathered, would stop to assure him that " the whole is 
now beyond accident." 

But there is not an instance in the Old Testament, or in the New, 
in which "the first fruits" is used in the sense of an earnest, or 
pledge, or pattern. If the whole harvest were to be given to the 
priests, then the " first sheaf" might be considered an earnest. As 
a gift from God to man, if there were a pledge, either by revelation 
or by experience, that " the whole harvest should be considered be- 
yond accident" whenever "the first sheaf" was gathered, then "the 
first fruits" might be an earnest or a pattern, or both; but there is 
no such revelation, and there is no such experience. 



MA TER1A LISM DENO UNCED. 119 

Christian system, for if the dead live not, then 
Christ lives not, hence " your faith is vain, and 
ye are yet in your sins,", for there is no for- 
giveness of sins except through Christ, to give 
" assurance " of whose power to forgive sins 
God raised Him from the dead. 

He proceeds, then, to affirm that if this doc- 
trine be eliminated from the system, there is 
nothing left worth embracing. In his daily con- 
flicts, which were such that he might be said to 
die daily, nothing could sustain him but the hope 
of living hereafter. Better eat, drink, and be 
merry, the few days of life, than to endure such 
conflicts, if the dead rise not. 

The second part of this chapter is devoted to 
an effort to disabuse the minds of the Corinthian 
church on the mode of that immortality. Some, 
at least, had assumed that the present body would 
be, in some way, connected with the future life, 
and asked, "with what body do they come?" 
Doubtless they were pressing the materialistic 
view of the subject, with the logical results of 
their creed, as the Sadducees had done; and, 
failing of a satisfactory answer, they had, like the 
Sadducees, come to deny the resurrection, the 
anastasis, or immortality, altogether. The ques- 
tion is identical in essence with that brought to 
Christ, and the answer proceeds on the same 
hypothesis, that their error is the legitimate 
result of their misapprehending the nature of the 
future life ; albeit, Paul is not quite as polite as 
Jesus was in his method of introducing his argu- 
ment. He calls the man a fool who expects to 
apply the laws of matter to spirit life. 

As the substratum of his answer, he assures 
them that flesh and blood can not inherit the 
kingdom of God, neither can corruption inherit 



120 STRIKING CONTRASTS 

incorruption ; hence the folly of their attempting 
to reason upon it from the laws of matter. 

Here we sow wheat, and we reap wheat ; we 
sow barley, and reap barley. God giveth to 
every seed its own body, resembling in every 
attribute the seed which has been sown. The 
same law, he says, governs animal life. Birds 
produce birds, and fish produce fish, and beasts 
produce beasts. There are different kinds of 
bodies, but fish never produce birds, nor wheat 
barley. There is also, he says, a difference be- 
tween earthly bodies and heavenly bodies, they 
being as unlike as birds are unlike fish or beasts. 
The glory of the terrestrial is one, and the glory 
of the celestial is another, and sowing the ter- 
restrial can no more produce a celestial than the 
sowing of wheat can produce any other kind of 
grain. We sow, for instance, a natural body, but 
we do not reap a natural body, for the celestial 
body is spiritual. We sow corruption, but our 
heavenly body is incorruptible.* 

We can not conceive how the apostle could 
have proceeded more determinately to disconnect 
the future life from the physical of this life. He 
not only states that flesh and blood can not 
inherit the kingdom of God, but in a half dozen 
contrasts he shows the utter impossibility of 
obtaining a material existence in another world. 
This body is corruptible, dishonored, weak, nat- 
ural, earthly ; while the resurrection body is in- 
corruptible, glorious, powerful, spiritual, heavenly. 

* The phrase, " There are celestial bodies," should forever 
silence the argument which assumes that a body must be material, 
or at least that the spiritual body of the future life must be manu- 
factured from the material once composing the earthly body. 
Angels have bodies — spiritual bodies. At least Paul says so, when 
he says there are celestial bodies. If angels can have bodies with- 
out matter, why may not man ? 



BETWEEN EARTH AND HEAVEN. 121 

As if fearing that even this clear statement 
was not sufficient, he returns, as it were, and 
restates the case thus: Our present bodies are 
made of the earth, and they are therefore earthy ; 
for the first man, Adam, was of the earth, earthy, 
and such are they also that are earthy, that is, 
such are his offspring ; but the last Adam was the 
Lord from heaven, and as is the heavenly, such 
are they also that are heavenly — not such will 
those be who shall be heavenly. 

And yet again, as though he would reiterate 
the argument until there could be no clinging to 
the earthy, he repeats: " And as we have borne the 
image of the earthy we shall also bear the image of 
the heavenly." The form of every verb in these 
sentences should fix the time of this resurrection. 
" As is the heavenly." If Christ went up with a 
physical body, which was transformed into a 
spiritual body, so also are they that are heavenly. 
Our friends in heaven are now like Christ — as 
Christ is. But we know that our friends have 
not taken their physical bodies to heaven. We 
who are yet alive shall bear the image of the 
heavenly when, like the dying thief, we shall be 
Avith him in paradise, though our bodies moulder 
in the dust. 

Great stress is laid upon the declaration, " It 
is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual 
body," and then we are told, by the believers in 
physical resurrection, that it is the body which 
is sown that is raised ; the identical body which 
dies lives again. We interpose as a sufficient 
answer to this Paul's own positive declaration, 
" Thou sowest not that body that shall be." The 
figure is the same, and the language is much 
more emphatic. Here we leave this argument 
utterly demolished by the direct language of 



122 REVELATION MUST BE ACCEPTED. 

Paul ; and surely Paul would not contradict him- 
self in so short a time. 

The effort to press this beautiful statement of 
the mode of man's immortality into service to 
prove that this body shall be " reinfused " by the 
soul at some future time, called the resurrection, 
has given rise to many most contradictory inter- 
pretations of the Scriptures, each warring against 
the other, and neither satisfying its own friends. 

With these theories we have nothing to do, 
further than to say that they all dishonor God in 
trying to devise some easy way for doing what 
they assume he has promised to do. If God has 
anywhere said that he attaches such importance 
to the matter which may at any time have com- 
posed our bodies, or such as compose them at the 
hour of death, that he watches it with special 
care, so that that identical matter shall be united 
with the soul, after interminable ages, it is the 
part of Christian faith to accept this promise 
without attempting to account for the manner in 
which it is to be done. The difficulties in the 
case are not to be wrestled with for a moment 
by us. Hence, to assume that there is a germ in 
man corresponding with the germ in the grain is 
utterly absurd and indefensible. If there is any 
promise of a future material body, it is to be 
raised, not vegetated. The old Jewish Luz, or 
indestructible bone, is as reasonable as such a 
theory. Away with all human devices to assist 
God m doing what to man seems difficult ! Paul 
attempted nothing of the kind in this chapter or 
elsewhere : but he so states the case that, but for 
a most persistent purpose to maintain an indefen- 
sible proposition, he never would have been 
quoted as authority for a material, fleshly resur- 
rection at the end of the world, or at any time. 



CHAPTER XL 
The Second Coming of Christ. 

WHY any other rule of interpretation should 
be applied to that class of scriptures 
which refers to the second coming of Christ 
than that admitted to be legitimate with others, 
it is impossible to conjecture. If we attempt to 
harmonize the views of the apostles, one of whom 
says that justification is of works and the other 
of faith, we do not become partisans of this or 
that, but show by the context that both agree 
with the doctrine of justification as elsewhere 
taught. 

We know that, notwithstanding the decree of 
the council to the contrary, at least those Chris- 
tians who remained at Jerusalem never ceased to 
offer the accustomed sacrifices of Jewish worship 
until after the destruction of the temple. They 
circumcised their children and observed the fasts 
and feasts of the Jews as religiously as the most 
devout Jew — indeed, they were themselves the 
most devout of their people, super-adding their 
Christian faith to the faith of the fathers, never 
dreaming that Christianity was to become a dis- 
tinct and antagonistic organization. Among these 
was no less a disciple than the apostle James him- 
self. Do we, therefore, quote their opinions and 
practices as authority for opinions and practices 
to-day, in reference to temple service, circum- 
cision and ceremonial sacrifice? Certainly not; 



124 MISTAKEN VIEWS 

yet the opinions which they entertained concern- 
ing the personal return of the Saviour to set up a 
temporal reign are quoted as authority for his yet 
coming, although we know that whatever they 
wrote or said on this subject implied an imme- 
diate appearance. Now, why should we not in- 
sist on temple worship, and daily sacrifices, and 
Jewish fasts and feasts, as earnestly as some do on 
the second advent of Christ, and enforce it as they 
do this, by an appeal to the views and customs of 
the early church?* 

We know that in opinions and practices the 
apostles differed during their whole lives among 
themselves, and that the best of them changed 
their views on the incidentals of Christianity as 
they grew older and found their earlier expec- 
tations mistaken, although there is no indication 
in their own writings or in cotemporaneous his- 
tory that they ever modified the doctrines of the 
Gospel, which they were commissioned to preach. 
As they began, so they ended ; as they preached 
in Judea, so they preached in Greece and Rome. 
" Redemption through his blood, the forgiveness 
of sins." 

Peter yielded his national prejudices so reluc- 
tantly that, notwithstanding the peculiar circum- 
stances under which he was introduced to the 
broader mission of the Gospel by the vision of the 
sheet let down from heaven, and the conversion 
of Gentiles at the house of Cornelius, he soon 
afterward refused to eat with Gentile converts, 



* " The first Christians had no thought of a history. They be- 
lieved in an immediate return of Jesus Christ to restore all things. 
They supposed that the end of the world was at hand, and that the 
last days foretold by Joel had begun to dawn. Thus they awaited 
those days of refreshing from the presence of the Lord which were 
to inaugurate the second coming of Christ." (De Pressense, Apos- 
tolic Age, page 48.) 



OF EARLY CHRISTIANS. 125 

and received a sharp rebuke from Paul for his 
back-sliding; while Paul, though a Hebrew of the 
Hebrews, entered at once fully into the univer- 
sality of the atonement, knowing neither Greek 
nor Jew, bond nor free. No one insists that 
Peter's earlier views on the subject should be 
accepted instead of his later. Though these 
views were entertained long after that prom- 
ised enduement of the Holy Ghost, which some 
suppose was to give clear and correct views of 
Christ and his mission, we easily dispose of them 
by the sensible concession that inspiration did 
not instantaneously correct the notions and preju- 
dices of early education. 

Every Sunday-school scholar knows that the 
disciples followed Christ to the last under the 
common impression of the Hebrew people, that 
the Messiah was to be a temporal prince, and 
that they were to be honored officers in the new 
government he was about to establish. Nothing 
is truer than that their sorrow at his death was 
intensified by their disappointment in this matter. 
"We had hoped that he would have redeemed 
Israel," was the sorrowful plaint which the two 
made to the stranger who inquired the cause of 
their sadness. 

Whatever may have been the intent of the 
heavenly messengers who consoled the wondering 
disciples as they gazed into heaven on the Mount 
of Ascension, their language only revived the 
hope the disciples had so long entertained, and 
led them to believe that at any moment he might 
be expected with the pomp and power that would 
insure his success. Is it strange, therefore, that 
in their sermons they referred to the " promise of 
God unto the fathers/' and "the hope of Israel"? 
The persecutions they suffered from a foreign 



126 CHRIST MISUNDERSTOOD 

governor only made them the more anxious for 
a deliverer who should rule in righteousness. 
Hence, in their letters, as well as in their ser- 
mons, there is frequent reference to this hope, 
especially in those which were written before the 
destruction of their national hope, in the destruc- 
tion of their national capital, while such refer- 
ence wholly disappears in the later writings of 
Paul, and in the Epistles and in the Gospel of 
John, which were written subsequent to that 
event. 

On more than one occasion the Saviour him- 
self had contributed to the formation of a hope 
that he would soon return with great pomp, and 
sit upon the throne of David. His language does 
not necessarily teach that. Indeed, interpreted as 
we can now interpret it, by the light of the events 
which have intervened between that teaching and 
our day, we know that it means something else. 
Yet, with the views which his disciples enter- 
tained, they could hardly see any other signifi- 
cation in it. 

The most circumstantial account of such a 
promise is given by three of the evangelists, 
Matthew, Mark and Luke, with unimportant dif- 
ferences of detail, as having occurred on the 
Mount of Olives over against the temple. The 
company had just retired from that costly struc- 
ture where the disciples had pointed out to him 
its beauty, adorned with goodly stones and gifts; 
to which he had replied that the time was near 
when not one stone should be left upon another. 
What conversation took place as they journeyed 
to the Mount is not recorded, but it was evidently 
about the strange declaration made concerning 
the future fate of Jerusalem and the temple, in 
which, no doubt, he had said that, in connection 



BY THE DISCIPLES. 127 

with that event, he would come and take ven- 
geance upon his enemies. Hence, when Peter, 
and James, and John, and Andrew were seated 
with him, in a kind of confidential way they asked 
when these things should be, and what would be 
the sign of his coming and the end of the world. 

Here are three questions in one, yet but one 
question. Those who have a theory to maintain 
assume that in the minds of the disciples the 
coming of Christ and the end of the world were 
to be synchronous, and the destruction of the 
temple another event; hence they arbitrarily di- 
vide the triple question into two, whereas it is 
certain that all were associated together as com- 
posing one grand transaction. 

The answer of the Saviour, as recorded by the 
three evangelists, is worthy of study, especially 
if we would arrive at the true import of this won- 
derful prediction. It was to be nearly forty years 
before these things should take place, and there 
was not at that time even a remote indication 
of their probability. 

It is contrary to all orthodox theories of the 
character of Christ to suppose that the declara- 
tion that he knew nothing about the time is to 
be taken in its literal signification. What is 
meant by it is not material to this discussion. 
He, however, gave such hints concerning the 
events themselves that men could not fail to rec- 
ognize the sign of his coming and the end of 
the world when they should take place. There is 
a childlike simplicity in the interest which these 
confiding Galileans took in the alarming picture 
of tribulation which should be connected with 
that great calamity — the destruction of the tem- 
ple — and we can almost see them draw near 
and, with bated breath, say, " Where, Lord?" 



128 HOPES OF PREFERMENT 

But, after all, how little they comprehended 
the important truths which were uttered ! Their 
minds were occupied with that picture of their 
own promotion and honor which was ever upper 
most in all their hopes and plans of the future. 
Like men from some mountain top of vision 
looking far away to some mountain top of beauty, 
they saw none of the intervening- sorrows and 
conflicts which lay between. What could they 
know of the second coming of Christ, in the 
technical sense in which it is now used? The 
idea that he should go and return could by no 
means have entered into their minds ; neither had 
they the remotest conception of what was to be 
implied in preaching the gospel throughout all 
the world. Their question could not possibly 
have included any allusion to the second coming 
of Christ as a part of a closing up of earth's 
history. That it should refer to the destruction 
of the temple and its accompanying incidents 
would be natural and probable. 

After giving, quite in detail, the persecutions, 
and wars, and earthquakes, and famines, and 
pestilences which should precede the event about 
which they had been talking — the destruction of 
the temple and the city — he describes the con- 
summation of the tribulation in one of the grand- 
est pieces of poetic prophecy contained in the 
Book of God : . 

" Immediately after the tribulation of those 
days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon 
shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall 
from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall 
be shaken, and upon the earth there shall be 
distress of nations, with perplexity, the sea and 
the waves roaring, men's hearts failing them for 
fear and for looking after those things which are 



BIASED THEIR MINDS. 129 

coming upon the earth. And then shall appear 
the sign of the Son of Man in heaven, and then 
shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they 
shall see the Son of Man coming in the clouds 
of heaven with power and great glory, and he 
shall send his angels with a great sound of a 
trumpet and they shall gather together the elect 
from the four winds, from one end of the 
heaven to the other. And when these things 
begin to come to pass, then look up and lift up 
your heads, for your redemption draweth nigh." 
{Strong s Harmony.'] 

No historic fact is better established than that 
the disciples themselves and the Christians of 
that generation received these predictions as 
referring to Jerusalem and the temple. Every 
Cnristian expositor and the most reliable Jewish 
historians agree that when, under Titus, about 
thirty-six years afterwards, the city was invested 
and there were times of tribulation, "distress of 
nations and perplexity," the Christians who were 
in Jerusalem, warned by this prophecy, availed 
themselves of a temporary withdrawal of the 
investing army and escaped, as here admonished, 
and perished not in the general overthrow. 

The thoughtful Bible scholar will not fail to 
notice the similarity of imagery existing in this 
and the language of Paul in his letters to the 
Thessalonians, written some twenty odd years 
later, and yet some fifteen or sixteen years before 
their fulfillment. With his ardent Jewish patriot- 
ism, and partaking, in common with his brethren, 
of the " hope of the fathers," he could not avoid 
entertaining the opinion that "this same Jesus 
would in like manner return" and fulfill " the 
promise to the fathers," confirmed by his own 
repeated promises as they understood them. 



130 THE DA Y OF THE LORD. 

Hence, after twenty gears' experience in the 
spiritual benefits of Christ's passion and the cor- 
roborating influences of the Holy Ghost, he still 
clings to a temporal Messiahship, which should 
at no great distance of time be ushered in with 
the sublime accompaniments which the Lord him- 
self had portrayed, and which had been handed 
over to Paul by those who heard Him : " For the 
Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a 
shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with 
the trump of God. . . . The Lord Jesus 
shall be revealed from heaven, with his mighty 
angels, in flaming fire, taking vengeance on them 
that know not God and that obey not the Gospel 
of our Lord Jesus Christ." 

Peter uses, substantially, the same form of 
speech in the third chapter of his second Epistle 
when referring to the same promise of the 
Saviour : " The day of the Lord will come as 
a thief in the night ; in which the heavens shall 
pass away with a great noise, and the elements 
shall melt with fervent heat, and the earth also 
and the works that are therein shall be burned 
up. . . . Looking for and hasting unto the 
day of God wherein the heavens, being on fire, 
shall be dissolved and the elements shall melt 
with fervent heat." But all this means nothing 
if it does not refer to an event close at hand. 
Peter so understood it himself, and so it was 
recorded : " Wherefore, beloved, seeing that you 
look for such things, be diligent that you may 
be found of him in peace." 

Is it consistent with the common notions of 
inspiration that the ultimate destruction of the 
earth and the heavens should be revealed, and 
that it should be revealed as being near at hand 
when it was thousands of years off ? The event 



PROPHETIC WRITING. 131 

here looked for did occur in less than five years 
from this writing, and in the manner described 
according to the poetic style of such descrip- 
tions. 

This high-wrought style of prophetic writing 
was familiar to the Jews. Isaiah had used it 
when describing a similar event, eight hundred 
years before : " Howl ye, for the day of the Lord 
is at hand. It shall come as a destruction from 
the Almighty. . . . Behold the day of the 
Lord cometh, cruel, both with wrath and fierce 
anger, to lay the land desolate. . . . For the 
stars of heaven and the constellations thereof 
shall not give their light. The sun shall be dark- 
ened in his going forth, and the moon shall not 
cause her light to shine. And I will punish the 
world for their evil and the wicked for their 
iniquity. ... I will shake the heavens and 
the earth shall remove out of her place in the 
wrath of the Lord of hosts, and in the day of his 
fierce anger." Isaiah, xiii., 6, 13. 

Every idea that is contained in Paul and in 
Peter and in Christ's discourse is contained in 
this prophecy of Isaiah. He speaks of the day 
of the Lord — that means, of course, it is claimed, 
the Day of Judgment. If it does in Peter it does 
in Isaiah, for the form of speech is identical. With 
Isaiah as with Peter it was at hand, close by. It 
was to "lay the land desolate," and "remove the 
earth out of her place." He does not say by fire, 
but it matters not ; it was to be destroyed. The 
heavens were to be shaken in Isaiah; they were 
to be dissolved in Peter, and to pass away with 
a great noise. The stars of heaven and the sun 
and moon were to be darkened with Isaiah. In 
Christ's prediction the sun was to be darkened 
and the moon turned to blood. 



132 PROPHECIES OF CHRIST. 

Why should there be an effort to apply these 
New Testament prophecies to something even yet 
future and not that of Isaiah also ? The style 
is identical and they refer to similar events. 
One was fulfilled in the overthrow of Babylon, 
the other in the destruction of Jerusalem. Isaiah 
fixes the application of his prediction by saying, 
"And Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, shall be as 
when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah.'* 
Christ fixes the application of his prediction in 
a like definite manner. After predicting wars 
and rumors of wars, and persecution, and the 
abomination of desolation, and false Christs, the 
sun and moon darkened, the stars falling from 
heaven, the sign of the Son of Man in heaven, 
the Son of Man coming in clouds, the sound of a 
trumpet, the gospel preached in all the world, the 
gathering together of the elect from one end of 
the heaven to the other — after all of these which 
are so often claimed as belonging to that period 
called the end of the world, Christ says, " This 
generation shall not pass till ALL THESE THINGS 
be fulfilled." Let Christ be his own expositor ! 
We repeat that all these things were fulfilled 
during that generation — Paul's and Peter's, as 
well as Christ's predictions ; for they all referred 
to the same events. 

It will not do to say that Christ spoke of 
the " end of the world," for every scholar knows 
that that phrase had a local or provincial mean- 
ing which limited it to the Roman empire or 
the end of that age, as we shall show hereafter. 
Besides, what notion could those ambitious 
followers of the Saviour have of such an event 
as the burning up of the world, just at the time 
in which they hoped to realize the fruition of all 
their ambitious purposes ? The end of the world, 



IDEAS OF THE DISCIPLES. 133 

in the sense of dogmatic theology, would have 
been the knell of their most cherished plans. 
No son of David, sitting on the restored throne 
of David, with themselves his chief officers, would 
have inspired their hopes if they thought that 
the world was to end just at that time. 

Suppose it to be true, as it certainly is, that 
until after the destruction of Jerusalem the dis- 
ciples accepted the promise of the Saviour as so 
personal that they each expected to share in the 
honors of that temporal kingdom which he should 
set up on his promised return ; and suppose it 
to be true, as it certainly is, that their faith in 
their personal interest in this event was such 
that they had so literally construed the many 
promises of the Saviour that they believed that 
if one or more of them should die before its ful- 
fillment they would be raised from their graves 
in order to participate in this grand consumma- 
tion of their hopes ; ail this does not prove that 
their hopes were well-founded any more than the 
unanimity of their faith in their personal promo- 
tion to places of honor, in the kingdom which 
they supposed Christ would establish, proved 
them correct in regard to that hope.* 

The Epistles to the Thessalonians were written 
about sixteen years before the invasion of Titus, 
and while this daily expectation of the promise 
of the Saviour was yet common among all 
Christians. But Paul lived to entertain quite 



* " The destruction of Jerusalem was to enlarge the views of the 
Christians as to the future of the Church, and to give infinite expan- 
sion to the horizon of prophecy. They had now been living in daily 
expectation of the end of the world, and the immediate return of 
Christ." (De Pressensc, Apostolic Age, page 407.) 

" The expectation of his immediate return in glory was then 
general. They thought that at any moment He might appear in the 
clouds, to judge the world." (Ibid, page 217.) 



134 JOHN'S CHANGE OF VIEWS. 

another view of the matter, as we shall see, while 
none of the apostles who wrote subsequent to the 
destruction of Jerusalem make any reference to 
the second coming of Christ, in the sense referred 
to by Paul in these epistles.* 

John's gospel was written twenty years after 
the destruction of Jerusalem, and is among the 
latest of the several letters and essays which were 
gathered together long afterward to constitute 
the New Testament. Whatever may have been 
the immediate occasion of its production, it is not 
probable that he would have wholly omitted to 
mention so important a speech of the Saviour if, 
in his mind, any part of it yet referred to a future 
event so absorbing in its nature as the second 
coming of Christ to judge the world must have 
appeared to him. He was one of the four to 
whom it was delivered, and he shared, with his 
brother disciples, the awe which its fearful pre- 
dictions inspired. But now more than a half 
century had passed since he sat with that 
company, " over against the temple." Its fearful 
revolutions and bitter persecutions had not only 
swept away the companions of his earlier life, but 
Jerusalem was a desolation, and, true to the pre- 
diction of the Saviour, and to the visions granted 
to himself on the isle of Patmos, the beautiful 
temple had perished amidst those terrible c'on- 



* " The views of the apostle as to the nearness of the closing 
period of history seem to have undergone some modifications. In 
the first stage of his career, he supposes that but a very few years 
will intervene before the coming of the day of the Lord. He is even 
persuaded that it will arrive before his own death. Subsequently, in 
the Roman prison, on the eve of sealing his testimony with his blood, 
\e receives new light. This is very evident from his epistle to the 
Vhilippians, ' For I am in. a strait betwixt two, having a desire to 
depart and be -with Christ, which is far better.' " (De Pressense, AJ>os* 
tolic Age, page 286.) 



PA urs MISTAKES. 135 

vulsions which were but feebly portrayed in the 
language of Christ, and in John's own visions of 
wrathful vials, and the white and the red horses 
and their riders, and the angel with one foot on 
sea and the other on the land swearing that time 
should be no longer. 

In these fifty years he had learned that there 
was a higher honor awaiting the sons of Zebe- 
dee than that sought for them by their ambi- 
tious mother, to sit one on the right hand and 
the other on the left, in the kingdom which she 
and they expected would soon be set up. While 
there is no allusion whatever in his Gospel to 
the prediction so minutely described by others, 
there is in the Epistles a reference to the appear- 
ance of the Saviour, and what we shall then be 
— not mere attendants, but like him, for we shall 
see him as he is ; — not as he will be, or as he 
was, or even as we think him to be, but as he 
is! 

No doubt, at the time of writing his Epistles 
to the Thessalonians Paul did expect, in com- 
mon with the Christians of his times, that Christ 
was about to fulfill the promise made bj the 
angels at the time of the ascension, and in the 
manner which their ambitious imaginings had 
prescribed; but we have seen that he and they 
were mistaken in the purport of the words of 
Christ, although, a few years after the death of 
this apostle, Christ did come and fulfill his prom- 
ise ; and he fulfilled their expectations as literally 
as he carried out the poetic portions of the pre- 
diction, and as literally as was fulfilled the proph- 
ecy of the sounding of a trumpet and the 
darkening of the heavens, and the falling of the 
stars. And all these were as literally fulfilled in 
the destruction of Jerusalem as the correspond- 



ICG INCONSISTENT ARGUMENTS. 

ing poetic figures of Isaiah were fulfilled in the 
destruction of Babylon. Yet there are not want- 
ing those who argue that because the literal 
stars did not fall at the destruction of Jerusa- 
lem therefore the prediction must yet be unful- 
filled, and it must therefore relate to the end of 
the world! They do not argue that because 
in the overthrow of Babylon the stars of 
heaven and the constellations thereof were to 
cease to give light, and the world and the wicked 
were to be punished, and it was not done, there- 
fore the prophecy was not fulfilled. 

After all, how strangely some men sink all 
their common sense and their education in main- 
taining some of their theological notions ! To an 
age which regarded the stars as mere atoms, not 
any larger than hail stones, and mere attendants 
upon the earth, it was possible to conceive of 
such a thing as the falling of stars as a literal fact ; 
but since science has demonstrated that the small- 
est fixed star is millions of times larger than our 
earth, the idea of their all falling to the earth 
is too absurd to command respectable contempt ; 
yet there are educated men who look for this 
very thing, and as firmly believe it will come 
as they believe anything spoken of in the Bible. 

Expositors lose our respect when they say, 
speaking of this prediction: Here its application 
to Jerusalem ends, and there its application to 
the end of the world begins ; — that was fulfilled in 
the destruction of Jerusalem, but this relates to 
the end of the world, the day of the Lord ; and 
we are inclined to believe that they do not much 
respect themselves; certainly they do not re- 
spect each other, for no two fix the dividing line 
at the same place. 

Suppose that we do eliminate from the teach- 



TING OF NA TIONAL ELEMENTS. 137 

ings of Paul, and Peter, and James, so much as 
was evidently tinged by their Jewish prejudices 
and national hopes, and suppose that we regard as 
merely uninspired opinions those passages which 
imply a re-appearance of the dead (but not the 
bodies of the dead) at the time of his coming, we 
do no more than Second Adventists do when they 
eliminate apostolic opinions as to the nearness of 
that coming. We believe the apostles were right 
as to the nearness of his coming, but wrong as to 
some of their notions of the details of that com- 
ing. Second Adventists believe they were wrong 
as to the time of his coming, but so eminently 
correct as to the details of his coming that they 
are prepared to anathematize those who dare 
to question the correctness of those opinions. 
Neither do we worse than every American 
patriot does when he eliminates Paul's notion 
of the sin of rebellion, or some of his notions 
on slavery, or his rules for greeting one another 
with a holy kiss, not to mention many other 
things which were evidently the utterances of 
his peculiar surroundings. 

We have already alluded to the universal con- 
cessions of scholars that the words rendered end 
of the world should be rendered C7id of the age % 
or end of the present order of things. The lan^ 
guage of Christ, at the temple, must have been a 
surprise to those disciples who had with so much 
satisfaction pointed out the beauty and costliness 
of that building, when he announced that the 
time was near at hand when not one stone should 
be left upon another. No wonder, therefore, 
that they sought an early opportunity for an 
explanation, in the triple-single question we have 
already quoted. 

Having never dreamed that the death of 



138 A QUESTION AND ANSWER. 

Christ would be any different from the death of 
any other great personage, and feeling sure that 
even that would be delayed until he should have 
set up the kingdom of great David's greater Son, 
how could they attach to the coming of Christ 
any such notion as that now attached to it by 
Second Adventists? Groaning under the yoke 
of a foreign oppressor, from which, in their imag- 
inations, they were to be delivered by the inau- 
guration of this new king; and believing that 
each of them would occupy an important place 
under the new government; and inferring from 
what had been said that the national calamity 
would be somehow connected with the over- 
throw of this oppressor; it was exactly in the 
spirit of the impatient Psalmist who, when simi- 
larly situated, exclaimed: "Lord, how long shall 
the wicked triumph?" that they asked, "What 
shall be the sign of thy coming and of the end of 
the present system of oppression and wrong — 
of the present order of things?" 

Any other construction of this question is forced 
and unnatural ; for they were certainly not look- 
ing for a destruction of the earth, and a winding 
up of all temporalities just at the moment that 
they should at once realize the hope of Israel, 
and attain to the acme of their personal am- 
bitions. 

The Saviour evidently so understood them, 
and he answers accordingly, though he predicts 
coming events of a very different character from 
what they had anticipated. He portrays a degree 
of tribulation such as earth had never seen, and 
then adds that his gospel should first be preached 
in all the world — in all the inhabited parts of the 
world, as the original word always means. It is 
a different word from that just used by the dis- 



SIGNS AND PREDICTIONS. 133 

ciples, and erroneously translated world. The 
two are never used interchangeably in good 
Greek. Mark's recollection of the word used 
was " among all nations." 

That the Gospel was so preached even before 
Paul's death we have Paul's testimony. In Col. 
i.. 23. he says: " The Gospel was preached to 
every creature under the whole heaven," show- 
ing that, according to the views of the apostles 
themselves, at least that much of the preliminary 
events of that wonderful prediction had taken 
place, preparatory to the great event which was 
to follow. No wonder, therefore, that they con- 
stantly looked for the Saviour, and said evermore, 
" The coming of the Lord draweth nigh." 

We admit that the most literal meaning of the 
language of the two men* who accosted the won- 
dering disciples on Mount Olivet implies a per- 
sonal return of the Saviour in a form visible to 
them : " This same Jesus, which is taken up from 
you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as 
ye have seen him go into heaven." (Acts i., 11.) 

Then he must be visible to them only, for this 
Jesus, since his death, had been seen only by his 
disciples, and by them only on chosen occasions. 
Yet such a return leaves out all of the usual 
fillings of the picture which tradition has thrown 



* " May they not have been the two men who were with Christ on 
the Mount of Transfiguration, Moses and Elias ? " ( Whedorts Notes 
on Acts.} 

We answer, Yes, or any other two men. David and Samuel, 
Daniel and Isaiah, or Moses and Joshua. It is just what we should 
expect of any of the good men who had lived and died, and who still 
live, as Christ teaches that Abraham and -Isaac and Jacob do. Two 
men is the exact meaning of the sacred writers. The time will 
come, and not far hence, when Scripture expositors will not find it 
necessary to substitute angels for men in such Scriptures. They were 
men, not ghosts nor angels, just men, nothing more or less. 



140 THE LORD'S COMING. 

around that event, so insufficiently authorized by 
the Scriptures. Here we have no trumpet, no 
burning worlds, no falling stars, no legions of 
angels, no setting of thrones, no judgment. The 
manner of this event is sublime in its simplicity 
and silence, and he was to come in like manner. 

If this text refers at all to a personal return 
of the Saviour it is absolutely fatal to the popu- 
lar theory. If it proves anything, it proves too 
much for those who introduce it as a witness. 
No one passage is more directly opposed to the 
popular notions of that event. That noiseless 
ascension, that friendly cloud, cannot be trans- 
formed into the manner which it is assumed will 
attend the opening of graves and the burning 
of worlds. 

But is anything more taught by this than is 
intended by Christ's own words : " I will come 
and receive you to myself? (John xiv., 3). Is 
it not the same thing? If not, why not? Yet 
it would be such an outrage upon the evident 
meaning of Christ to wrest this text from its 
surroundings, and make it tributary to the doc- 
trine of Second Adventists, that Dr. Adam 
Clarke, himself a Second Adventist, says it 
means : " I will come again after my resurrec- 
tion, and give you the fullest assurance of this 
state of blessedness, and confirm you in the 
faith by my grace and the effusion of my 
spirit." 

But if all this did not remove the passage 
from the list of proof texts, and even if it were 
tenfold more positive in its language, still it 
would not be admissible to prove the second 
coming of Christ by it alone, in opposition to 
the otherwise uniform teachings of inspiration. 
That method of interpretation is no longer tol- 



PROPHETIC PHRASES. 141 

erated in good society. It might have answered 
a hundred years ago, when it was customary to 
comfort the elect by learned discourses from the 
Scripture : " Jacob have I loved and Esau have 
I hated," to prove the doctrine of unconditional 
personal election and reprobation. We hear no 
more of that among scholars — it is hardly heard 
any longer even on the outskirts of civilization, 
among the fast disappearing " hardshells " of the 
past generation. 

Dr. Adam Clarke, who believed with the 
best of modern Biblical scholars that the book 
of Revelation was written before the destruction 
of Jerusalem, thus disposes of three favorite proof 
texts of this dogma: " ' Behold he cometh with 
clouds ' (Rev. i., f) ; this relates perhaps to his 
coming to destrov Jerusalem. ' Behold, I come 
quickly' (Rev. xxii., 12); I come to establish my 
cause, comfort and support my followers, and 
punish the wicked. 'Surely, I come quickly' 
(Rev. xxii., 20) ; this may be truly said to every 
person in every age." 

We repeat that the phrases: "the end," 
"end of the world," "last day," "day of the 
Lord," and kindred phrases nowhere occur in 
the Bible referring to the closing up of earthly 
affairs. They cannot be so applied without do- 
ing violence to the opinions of eminent commen- 
tators, both ancient and modern, who are 
entitled to a respectful consideration. Dr. 
Strong, in his Notes on the Gospels, p. 287, says : 
" The question, ' What shall be the sign of thy 
coming and the end of the world?' is deeply 
imbued with the prevailing expectations of the 
Jews that the national operations of the Messiah 
would occasion such political convulsions as 
might indeed endanger for the time their present 



142 " THE END OF THE WORLD." 

institutions, but would result in their re-estab- 
lishment, with fresh glory and universal 
authority." 

Richard Watson, in his Exposition, p. 247, 
says : " Here the disciples appear to employ the 
phrase, end of the world, for that glorious mani- 
festation of their master which they anticipated ; 
one of honor and glory to them, and destruction 
to his enemies. ,, 

Dr. Joseph Benson, in his notes on Matt, 
xxiv., 3, says: "The disciples inquire concerning 
two things : first, the time of the destruction of 
Jerusalem ; second, the sign of it." 

Dr. Adam Clarke, on Matt, xvi., 28, says : " Very 
clearly the whole passage speaks of the destruc- 
tion of the Jewish polity." On Matt, xxiv., 3, 
he says: "End of the world means end of the 
age, the end of the Jewish economy." 

•But we have a still more ancient commenta- 
tor of some repute, and whose expositions of 
Scripture are worthy of consideration, and his 
name is Paul. Speaking of Christ, he says: 
" But now in the end of the world hath he ap- 
peared " (Heb. ix., 26). This, at least, shows 
Paul's opinion of the end of the world. Again : 
" In these last days hath spoken to us by his Son 
(Heb. i., 2). 

We have still another ancient commentator/ 
and his name is Peter. Standing up before his 
brethren, he commented on the words of Joel, 
and said : " This is that which was spoken by 
Joel to come to pass in the last days." 

We have still another. Christ himself becomes 
his own expositor. He says : " The harvest is the 
end of the world." Then, as fixing the time of the 
harvest, he says : " Lift up your eyes, for the fields 
are white already to the harvest ! " 



THE EARLIER AND LATER PROPHETS. 143 

Are we wrong, therefore, in saying that these 
phrases never occur as referring to the winding- 
up of earth's history ? Explained by Christ 
himself, and by Paul and Peter, and by eminent 
scholars of modern times, they have another 
meaning. In the face of such authority is it not 
almost impious to claim their use in the sense 
which implies a destruction of the earth and 
earthly things ? 

But does not the phrase, " The day of the 
Lord," mean the Day of Judgment? It certainly 
does in Peter and similar Scriptures if it does 
in Isaiah, where it is twice used, and where 
Isaiah himself applies it to the destruction of 
Babylon. The form of speech is the same in 
Peter, and the style of Peter's prediction is 
identical with that of Isaiah, and the events refer- 
ed to are as similar as events nine hundred 
years apart could be. Will any one tell why it 
must be made to mean a future general judg- 
ment in Peter, and be restricted to the judgment 
of Babylon in Isaiah? 

But a greater than Isaiah or Peter throws 
light upon it. Christ himself tells us what his 
day means. " Abraham rejoiced to see my day. 
He saw z/, and was glad" (John viii., 56). This 
cannot, by any stretch of imagination, be made 
to refer to a remote and ever-receding day of 
judgment, in the sense in which it is used in 
modern pulpits. 

With the utmost deference, therefore, to the 
learned men who have sought to maintain an un- 
scriptural theory as to the mode of our future 
life, by applying the language of Christ in direct 
opposition to his own words, we conclude that 
not a word of his prediction can be pressed into 
service to prove his second coming in the tech- 



144 PROXIMITY OF THINGS FORETOLD. 

nical sense which dogmatic theology assumes. 
Even though all that the apostles wrote concerning 
the coming of Christ had reference to the end 
of time, we should yet be compelled to find an 
apology for them. Their language means noth- 
ing if it does not mean that the event of which 
they wrote was near at hand. But nearly two 
thousand years have passed, and the end is not 
yet; on the contrary, this earth seems to be 
in the very spring-time of a vigorous youth. 
Its railroads, and telegraphs, and steamships, 
and printing-presses do not indicate the sere 
and yellow leaf of decay, but the preparations 
for a new life for which all past ages were pre- 
liminary and preparatory. If Paul was talking 
of an early closing up of terrestrial affairs, he 
was as badly mistaken as when he enjoined 
silence upon women. The world refuses to 
wind up, and women make excellent preachers, 
in spite of him. 

Finally, why should we be shut up to apos- 
tolic notions of the end of time, even assum- 
ing that they meant to teach the doctrine 
of a second coming, still future, with the usual 
supposed concomitants of such an event, and 
yet reject their opinions concerning the begin- 
ning? It is not probable that they knew any 
more of the future of earth than of the past any 
more of the method of its ending than of the 
manner of its creation, or of its shape and size. 
They knew that through Jesus they were author- 
ized to preach repentance and the forgiveness 
of sins, but beyond that they were quite as likely 
to be mistaken as other men, on questions and 
opinions which were but remotely, if at all, ger- 
main to the specialty of their mission. 

But there is manifestly a using of the words 



THE PRACTICAL COMING OF CHRIST. U5 

which relate to a coming- of Christ in a sense 
which does not refer to the overthrow of Jeru- 
salem, nor yet to the Day of Judgment. There 
is a personal application of this form of speech 
which has not escaped even the most ardent of 
Second Adventists. They cannot preach, or 
write, or lecture on the subject without rising 
higher than their creed, and being wiser than 
their theory. They uniformly close their wild 
speculations by a word of sound sense, and say : 
" Whatever may be the manner, and whenever 
the time, Christ comes practically to each of us 
whenever he comes to call us hence by his 
messenger, death."* 

This is Scriptural as well as sensible; and it 
has the sanction of the Saviour. His parables 
abound with such exhortations as these : 
" Watch, therefore, for ye know not at what 
hour your Lord doth come." " Be ye also 
ready , for in such an hour as ye think not, the 
Son of Man cometh." " Watch, therefore, for 
ye know not when the Master of the House 
cometh." These admonitions are connected 
with such parables as the foolish virgins, the 
householder, and the faithful servants. 

Even in the discourse which referred to the 
destruction of Jerusalem it would be meaning- 
less in any other sense, for not many, if any, of 
those who heard him could live to see the event 
spoken of. Is it not strange, therefore, that by 
Second Adventists, in every case where refer- 



* " The individual death is the virtual coming of the Son of 
Man." — Whedoris Notes, Vol. I., p. 291. 

"The majestic coming of Christ is going on constantly in the 
process of history." — Lange on Matt., p. 431. 

"Jesus may be said to come quickly to. every person in every age, " 
Dr. A. Clarke, Rev. xxit., 22. 
G 



148 A SIMPLE SOLUTION. 

ence to the coming of Christ occurs in the 
writings of the apostles, it is claimed as a proof 
of a second personal coming and the supposed 
end of the world, while the application which 
Christ himself gives is dragged in grudgingly, 
as an afterthought or exhortation ? 

It will help us to understand the frequent allu- 
sion to the coming of Christ in the sense which 
Christ himself certainly authorizes, to remember 
that death is not a separation of the soul, as a 
part of the man, from the body, another part of 
the man, for an indefinite but long period, the 
soul to wander a naked ghost until a general 
resurrection, but it is the man being unclothed 
of mortality, that he may be clothed upon with 
immortality. 

In this light, how intelligible are the most 
of those passages which refer to the coming of 
Christ ! " As in Adam all die, even so in Christ 
shall all be made alive." " Christ the first fruits, 
afterward they that are Christ's " when he comes 
to call them from the tribulations and duties of 
earth to his society in the land of spirits. They 
that are Christ's, — those who are watching like 
the wise virgins, will be made to live, as the 
dying thief was, at that period which is known 
in the language of men as death ; and they shall 
be like Christ and be forever with him. 

Even that oft-quoted language of Paul, "For 
our conversation [our citizenship] is in heaven; 
whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord 
Jesus Christ, who shall change our vile bodies 
and fashion them like unto his glorious body," 
has a beauty and significance from this stand- 
point that is never seen from any other. Re- 
membering that Paul and Peter speak of the 
body as a tabernacle for the real man^ which 



MOR TALIT Y DROPPED. 147 

may be "put off" or exchanged for a better 
one ; as a garment of which we may be " un- 
clothed," that we may be " clothed upon " with 
something better, and of another fashion, even a 
heavenly ; and remembering that departing from 
this we are at once with the Lord, and like 
him, and remembering also that the word which 
is rendered " change " is often used very nearly 
in the sense of "exchange" — " These things have 
I transferred [exchanged] to myself and to 
Apollos," (i Cor., iv., 6) — there can be no violence 
done to the meaning of Paul to thus paraphrase 
his language : " We are in fact not citizens of 
earth, but of heaven, whence we constantly look 
for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, who 
shall change these bodies of humiliation, which 
are fitted only to earth, for bodies like unto 
the body of glory which was seen upon the 
Mount of Transfiguration, and which shall be in 
fashion in heaven." 

Such a paraphrase makes it consistent with 
the uniform teachings of the Bible elsewhere, 
especially with such Scriptures as those which 
represent death as the unclothing of the man, 
preparatory to the clothing upon with the heav- 
enly house — the house of heavenly fashion. 

The soldier returning from the battle-field to 
the endearments and rest of home might well 
soliloquise, " I am only a soldier here and a 
stranger. These tattered and camp-worn gar- 
ments are unsuited for the society of civil life, 
but at the borders of my own land I shall meet 
my father, who shall change these vile garments 
and fashion them like unto the clothing which 
he wears, for he is abundantly able to do this, 
and he is as willing as he is able," and the 
weary soldier would tread firmer and faster as 



143 IMMORTALITY PUT ON. 

he would anticipate such a change of clothing, 
without dreaming that the old filthy blue would 
become the basis of his new outfit. When we 
talk of changing garments in spring or autumn, 
and adopting a fashion better suited to the 
coming season, we do not propose to make over 
the worn-out rags which we mean to drop 
when we step into the new. No more does 
Christ propose to make our heavenly body out 
of our cast-off earthly body. We know that in 
fact he does not do this, for it lies all decayed 
and offensive in the grave, and we know that 
the soul, the real man, is not a naked ghost in 
heaven, for the man is with the Lord and like 
him — "as he is" — "as the angels of God in 
heaven." Therefore this change cannot be a 
transformation merely. 

We add that those who insist upon the most 
literal meaning of such words of this text as 
indicate a transformation of the old body into 
the new must take also the most literal meaning 
of other words, and teach that the Christian, 
being a citizen of heaven, owes no duties to the 
institutions of earth. This has been tried in a 
few extreme cases, but usually the believer in a 
literal interpretation has found himself in the 
hospital for the insane, as a maniac. 

From this standpoint how full of meaning 
and consolation is that other language Of Paul : 
" When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, 
then shall ye also appear with him in glory." 
The cold, cheerless view, that this refers to his 
appearing at that remote event called the Judg- 
ment, leaves the man in a state of unconscious- 
ness or sleep, or at least in but a partially happy 
state, awaiting that event which is to open glory 
for him. But, viewed as Paul viewed it, we find 



THE TRUE ADVENT. 149 

the man going at once with Christ into glory, 
as the penitent thief did — then, at that very mo- 
ment, not indefinite ages hence. " I AM the life," 
says Christ, not I will be. 

John, in his gospel, written long after the 
fulfillment of Christ's prediction concerning Jeru- 
salem, makes no mention of that coming which 
had become history, yet he beautifully alludes 
to that coming to which Christ referred when 
he said, "Be ye also ready, for at an hour ye 
think not the Son of Man cometh." " It doth 
not yet appear what we shall be," said he, " but 
we know that when he appears we shall be like 
him, for we shall see him as he is." Mark the 
beauty of this teaching. " When he appears" — 
at that very moment — " we shall be like him, for 
we shall see him as he is," not as he was, not 
as he will be, but as he is f The dead are with 
the Lord and they are nozv like him. 

Such an interpretation of these references to 
the coming of the Saviour makes the Bible con- 
sistent with itself, and gives such a view of 
Heaven as the martyrs had when they tri- 
umphed in death — such as dying Christians now 
have. In this light death loses its sting, the 
grave gains no victory, for mortality is at once 
and forever swallowed, up in life. 

And we may add that there is no middle 
ground between such outbreaks of fanaticism as 
swept over the country about the year 1843, 
and which has a local existence more or less all 
the time, and the views here set forth. If the 
second coming of Christ is to be literal, it is 
equally literally the duty of every man to expect 
it daily. "It draweth nigh," is "at the door." 
So that those who "look for those things" 
are wiser in their generation than those who 



150 CONSISTENT ADVENTISTS. 

believe the absurdities as to manner and re- 
ject the absurdities as to time. Millerites and 
their kith are the only consistent Second Ad- 
ventists. 



CHAPTER XII 

Verbal Criticisms — Anastasis, Egersis — The Word of the 
Lord — Rise First. 

WITH a wholesome disrelish for that style 
of discussion which falls behind a dis- 
play of learning in an emergency, and resorts 
to nice distinctions in the words of the original 
languages of the Bible, we call attention to a 
few words which often occur in connection with 
the subject under discussion. We do it, dis- 
tinctly announcing that whatever argument may 
be found in this examination is merely corrobo- 
rative and cumulative, not vital. The argument 
of the book is complete without this ; yet, in 
deference to the tastes of some, we introduce it. 
We announce further, that while we con- 
sider the argument of this chapter unanswerable, 
we shall not be surprised if some valiant Greek 
should array against it even a greater display of 
learning, and completely overthrow it, in his judg- 
ment at least. Indeed it will be strange if this is 
not done, since for ages Greek has met Greek on 
theological subjects with as relentless a " tug of 
war" and with as indecisive results as of old 
Greek met Greek on the .field of carnal strife. 
While it is yet unsettled whether baptizo means 
to sprinkle or to immerse, and whether the pre- 
position en means into or near by, and whether 
apo means out of or away from, we shall not be 
dogmatic enough to pronounce all persons wil- 
fully blind who do not agree with our conclu- 
sions from the following statements. 



152 BURIAL OF THE BODY. 

In the first place, the chief if not the only 

Elausible argument against our exposition of the 
fteenth chapter of first Corinthians is, -that in 
the phrase, " It is sown a natural body, it is 
raised a spiritual body," the pronoun it must 
have body for its antecedent, and therefore the 
body that is sown must be the body which is 
raised. This is sufficiently answered by the 
language of Paul, " Thou sow est not that body 
that shall be." But it may be further answered 
by the fact that there is no word in the original 
answering to our translator's it. The idiom of 
the Greek language indeed requires the use of 
this unpersonal pronoun in the translation, but 
no good Greek scholar will insist that such a 
use of such a pronoun gives any authority for 
its use as a personal pronoun with an antece- 
dent,* any more than a similar use of the same 
word in the impersonal phrases, " it rains," " it is 
said," "it is seen," and hundreds of like char- 
acter, requires it to have an antecedent. 

We have already stated that many of the best 
Greek scholars of modern times maintain that 
the word anastasis always refers to the after life, 
and seldom, if ever, to the method of reaching 
that immortality, and that, though always ren- 
dered resurrection, it never refers solely to the act 
of rising, but includes also the idea of living 
afterwards, if not this wholly ; while its com- 
panion word, egersis, is not a synonym, but refers 
to the act of raising or arousing, and seldom, if 
ever, including the idea of the after life y which 
is always implied in anastasis.* 

* " Anastasis, the word constantly used throughout the New Tes- 
tament for resurrection, signifies a rising again, a life after death, 
another state of the same person, but never once, that I know of, 
signifies or even implies a resurrection of the same body. " — Bishop 

Newton. 



THE AFTER LIFE. 153 

Let us collate a few passages of Scripture in 
which these words occur, and we shall see that 
they are never used interchangeably, but that 
the distinction here stated is carefully observed. 

Matthew (xvi., 21) and Luke (ix., 22), in giving 
their version of Christ's reference to his rising, 
use the passive form and represent him as being 
" raised again the third day." They each use 
egeiro. Mark, however, (viii., 31) uses the active 
form, as including Christ's own power, and 
properly uses the verb anistemi. "After three 
days shall rise again." In the account given by 
each of these three evangelists of another refer- 
ence by Christ to the same event, we find each 
of the three referring to it as Christ's own act, 
and each uses anistemi. " And the third day he 
shall rise again." 

We find the same careful use of these two 
words in the accounts which the evangelists give 
of the fact itself. We have the angels in their 
statement saying : " He is risen." (Matt, xxviii., 
6, 7; Luke xxiv., 6; Mark xvi., 6.) Here is refer- 
ence only to the disappearance of the body from 
the grave, hence each writer uses egeiro. But 
when the disciples come to speak of him they 
say he is alive, hence that strange disappearance 
maans more than the removal of the body from 
the g'rave. " For as yet they knew not the 
Scripture, that he must rise again from the dead" 
(anistemi.) 

At the meeting of the disciples in which the 
unexpected disappearance of the body was dis- 
cussed, we have "The Lord is risen indeed"— 
{egeiro) (Luke xxiv., 34) — while in Christ's exposi- 
tion of the Scripture to them, he uses the word 
which implies power and living, hence when 
he says, " It behooved Christ to rise from the 



154 E>IS TINCTION BE T WEEN 

dead the third day," he uses anistemi. (Luke 
xxiv., 46.) 

Notice the choice of words with the two men 
in shining garments, which can hardly be acci- 
dental. In Luke xxiv., 6, they say " He is not 
here, but is risen," {egeiro) alluding to the disap- 
pearance of the body. But in the next verse 
they mean more than that, and consequently say, 
" Remember that he said unto you : The Son 
of Man must rise again," (anistemi) plainly teach- 
ing the after life, not the mere removal of the 
body from the grave. Yet when the promise 
was made, both Matthew (xvi., 21; xvii., 23) and 
Luke (ix., 22) understood him to refer only to a 
raising of the body, and accordingly use the verb 
egeiro, to awake, arouse, arise. 

The noun egersis occurs but once in the whole 
New Testament. Its meaning there cannot be 
mistaken. In Matthew xxvii., 53, we have: "And 
came out of the graves after his resurrection" 
{egersis). There is the best of reasons for not 
using anastasis in this connection. The anastasis 
of Christ took place when the Father received 
his spirit and when he and the thief were, that 
very day, in Paradise ; while the egersis, the rising 
up of the body, was delayed some thirty-six hours 
or more. The rising of the bodies which came 
out of the graves was after the egersis, or raising, 
of Christ's body. Here we have the active form 
of the verb, yet we have the verb egeiro. " Many 
bodies of the saints which slept arose," for the 
rising was not to the anastasis — the future life, 
but merely an exceptional and miraculous event 
for a specific purpose. 

We find the distinction between these two 
words carefully "observed in the account of the 
egersis, or raising up of Lazarus. When Christ 



RISING AND RESURRECTION. 155 

spoke to Martha he had reference to the immor- 
tality of Lazarus, and said "Thy brother shall 
rise again " {anistemi), meaning more than the mir- 
acle which he was about to perform. Martha's 
answer referred to the same thing, for she had 
never thought of the resuscitation of his dead 
body at that time, hence she uses both the verbal 
and substantive form of anastasis in her answer, 
whereupon Christ replies, " I am the resurrection 
[the anastasis, the immortality] and the life." Sub- 
sequently, every reference which is made to the 
risen Lazarus is with the verb egeiro, although 
the active form of the verb is used. " Whom he 
raised," "whom he had raised," "and raised him 
from the dead." (John xii., i, 9, 17). 

The reason is obvious. There is in neither 
case any reference to the anastasis. Lazarus had 
to die again, as other men, and be raised to 
immortality, to the anastasis, as other men. 

The same egeiro is used when speaking of ail 
the dead whom he -had miraculously raised : "The 
dead are raised up," (Matt, xi., 5, Luke vii., 22), 
for these miracles did not procure immortality, 
they only restored the subjects of them to their 
natural lives. The anastasis was to follow as with 
all others. 

Let us look at Paul's use of these words in 
his celebrated argument in the fifteenth of First 
Corinthians, in which the doctrine of man's im- 
mortality is purposely and fully discussed. It 
will be seen that the words are never used inter- 
changeably, and also that the distinction we have 
noticed is carefully observed. In the fourth verse 
we have, " He rose again the third day." Egeiro 
is here used, not anistemi as would be proper if 
he had referred to his soul-resurrection — his anas- 
tasis — his after-living; but, referring only to the 



156 PA UL'S PHRA SEOLOG Y 

removal of the body from the grave as an attesta- 
tion of his mission, he uses egeiro. . . . 

In the twelfth verse we have: "If Christ be 
preached that he rose from the dead," {egeiro). 
This is as it should be, for there is a reference 
simply to his egersis, the act or fact of rising. 
But when he comes to the question of immor- 
tality he says, " How say some among you that 
there is no anastasisf" no future life. "If refer- 
ence had- been only to the fact of rising he 
should have used the noun egersis as Matthew 
did (xxvii., 53), when refering to that only. 

In the thirteenth verse We have the same 
choice of words. " If there be no resurrection 
[no anastasis, no future life — no immortality] then 
is Christ not risen," {egeiro). Plainly this conclu- 
sion would follow, for he was arguing in favor 
of immortality through Christ, whose egersis or 
rising from the grave was proof of authority, 

In the fourteenth verse, pursuing the same 
line of argument, and reaching the same conclu- 
sion from the same premises, we have : " If Christ 
be not risen " {egeiro) then the whole Christian 
system is a failure, for it is without sufficient 
attestation. 

In verses 16, 17, 20, we have: "For if the 
dead rise not (egeiro) then is Christ not raised, 
(egeiro), and if Christ be not raised (egeiro) your 
faith is vain. But now is Christ risen from the 
dead," (egeiro). But in the twenty-first verse we 
have a change of words because there is a 
change of meaning. Coming to the subject of 
his discourse, human immortality, he uses anasta- 
sis, not egersis as would have been proper if he 
had been talking of the rising of the physical 
body as he had been of the body of Christ. 
" By man came the resurrection of the dead ;" 



EXAMINED. x 157 

the anastasis, the future living, not merely the 
act of coming from the grave. 

Again, in the twenty-ninth and thirty-second 
verses we have the same egeiro. " If the dead 
rise not at all" — if they are not aroused from 
their slumbers — if death is the end .of man. In 
the thirty-fifth verse we again have egeiro with 
special significance, " How are the dead raised 
up?" How is that change effected? How are 
they aroused ? With what body do they come ? 
referring to the idea of the objector that a body 
must be raised as Christ's body was raised. In 
the answer he uses the word anastasis y not eger- 
sis as he would have done had he been writing of 
the arousing of the same body ; and as the sacred 
writers always do when referring to the mere act 
of raising the body of Christ / " So also is the resur- 
rection" — the anastasis. In the next breath he 
again uses egeiro in reference to the act of raising : 
" It is raised in incorruption — is raised in power, — 
is raised a spiritual body." We have the same 
egeiro in verse fifty-second. " The dead shall be 
raised incorruptible," shall be aroused, waked up 
to a life of immortality. 

Bearing in mind that there is in this chapter 
a distinct denial of a bodily resurrection (v. 50), 
" Flesh and blood" — the natural body — " can not 
inherit the kingdom of God," and that Paul more 
than once says that that which is raised is not 
what is sown, but something as entirely unlike 
it as birds are unlike fishes or wheat unlike 
other grain, his use of egeiro instead of anistemi 
is significant, seeing that he is referring all the 
time only to the act of arousing, or awaking; 
not to the living afterwards — not to the anas- 
tasis. 

That the word anastasis, which is always ren- 



158 ILL USTRA TIONS FROM EPHESIANS 

dered resurrection, seldom, if ever, refers to the 
fact of rising, we cite a few more passages to 
prove. In the selection of a successor to Judas 
it became desirable to have one who should be 
a witness of the resurrection of Christ, as that 
was implied by the word anastasis. Now, none 
of the disciples had witnessed the rising of 
Christ, the egersis. Probably not even the Ro- 
man soldiers had witnessed that, yet Matthias 
and the eleven had all witnessed his resurrec- 
tion, his anastasis, during the forty days which 
intervened before his ascension. They had seen 
him living again, though not one of them had 
seen him rise. 

That the word egeiro, so appropriately used 
everywhere to speak of the fact of rising, does 
not include all that is implied by anistemi is 
further evident from several examples of its use. 
In John v., 21, we have, "The Father raiseth 
up the dead and quickeneth them," referring to 
the gift of immortality. Here the verb is egeiro, 
but it must be accompanied by the verb which 
implies quickening, or giving immortal life, for 
it alone is not sufficient to express the tran- 
sition from mortality to immortality ; but anis- 
temi does. In John vi., 40, 54, we have the whole 
idea conveyed by anistemi, " I will raise him up 
at the last day." 

This difference is equally manifest in Eph. v., 
14, " Awake (egeiro), thou that sleepest, arise from 
the dead (anistemi), and Christ shall give thee 
light." The arousing from the sleep of sin is 
one thing, the living a life of righteousness is 
quite another, just as awaking from death is one 
thing, living in the anastasis is another. 

In Acts the words, to a careless reader, seem 
to be used interchangeably, but they never are. 



AND THE ACTS. 159 

This difference is everywhere observed. Anis- 
temi always means more than egeiro, the latter 
referring to the mere fact of rising; the former 
to the living afterward. Thus in Acts ii., 24 and 
32, we have, " Whom God hath raised up," and 
" This Jesus hath God raised up, . . being at 
the right hand of God exalted." As might be 
expected, here we have anistemi, for the resur- 
rection is coupled with demonstrations of power. 
Again (iii., 26), " God, having raised up his son 
Jesus, sent him to bless you." Again (xvii., 3), 
" Alleging that Christ must needs have suf- 
fered and risen again from the dead." Again 
(xvii., 31), " He will judge the world in right- 
eousness by that man whom he hath ordained, 
whereof he hath given assurance unto all men in 
that he hath raised him from the dead." Again 
(xxiv., 23), " That Christ should suffer and that 
he should be the first that should rise from the 
dead." In all these we have anistemi, and the 
context shoAVS in each case that the aim was to 
call attention to the after life of Christ and the 
power consequent upon his now living, more 
than to the mere fact of his rising — his egersis. 
"Should show light to the people" — " should 
judge the world in righteousness " — " This Jesus 
is the Christ" — " Sent him to bless you," are the 
explanatory phrases. 

On the other hand, we have egeiro in all of 
the following passages, in each of which the fact 
of his rising is the leading thought. " Whom 
God hath raised from the dead" (iii., 18; iv., 10). 
" The God of our fathers raised up Jesus " (v H 30). 
" Him God raised the third day " (x., 40). " But 
God raised him from the dead " (xiii., 30). " Whom 
God raised again" (xiii., 37). "Incredible that 
God should raise the dead" (xxvi., 8). 



160 PA Urs PREDICTION 

The same distinction is observed in the lan- 
guage of Paul in that beautiful sentence in i 
Thess. iv., 16, " The dead in Christ shall rise 
first." If this referred to the raising of bodies 
from the countless graves of earth, as is usually 
supposed, the apostle would have used egeiro 
as the proper verb, as in the examples just 
given. But no ; he means that the dead in Christ 
shall be changed from mortality to immortality, 
shall live before that day, not the first thing on 
that day as some suppose, and he uses the verb 
anistemi in its most obvious sense. 

By not observing the proper meaning of the 
words used in this connection this language of 
Paul has been distorted from its true meaning so 
as to give countenance to the popular notion of 
the second coming of Christ. In the first place, 
great stress is laid upon the phrase, " By the 
Word of the Lord," as if Paul claimed special 
inspiration upon this one subject, whereas he 
means only that he refers to the same thing as 
that to which the Lord referred in his discourse 
as he sat over against the temple. The prepo- 
sition en is never used in the New Testament, to 
our knowledge, in the sense of by authority, but it is 
often used in the sense of according to, or in con- 
formity with, and has that meaning here. Again, 
the ordinary picture of the resurrection at the 
last day, when the trump shall sound, is that 
the graves shall be* opened, and the first thing 
to be done on that day, or as it is expressed in 
poetry, " on the resurrection morn," will be the 
raising of the bodies which had be'en dead thou- 
sands, and probably millions 'of years; then, after 
all this is done, and not until all is done, we 
which are alive and remain shall be changed in 
a moment. It spoils all this picture to look at 



OF THE RESURRECTION. 161 

the language of Paul in the light of good Greek. 
The word anistemi is used instead of egeiro ; and 
the adverb which is rendered first is used here 
in the sense of before, which is by far its most 
common meaning in the New Testament; as, 
" Seek first y [before all other things,] the king- 
dom, etc."* 

Taken in connection with the discourse of 
Christ, and taking the words in their most obvi- 
ous sense, and remembering that it was written 
just before the fulfillment of the prediction which 
was to be all fulfilled during that generation, the 
passage means : " this we say on authority of the 
Lord's teaching; . . . and those who have died 
in Christ shall live in their immortality before 
that dav of tribulation." 



CHAPTER XIII. 

THE ARGUMENT FROM EXPERIENCE. THE LANGUAGE OF DYING 
CHRISTIANS INCONSISTENT WITH A BELIEF IN A BODILY RESUR- 
RECTION. THE FAITH, BETTER THAN THE CREED. 

IT is a noteworthy fact that the language of 
dying Christians, expressive of their hopes 
of immortality, is seldom, if ever, consistent with 
a belief in a- far off future bodily resurrection, 
whatever views they entertained on this subject 
in health. We do not allege that their opinions 
have been changed by any process of reasoning, 
or that they have been changed at all. Possi- 
bly they have not been; still the fact is of value 
in determining the mode of man's immortality. 
We cannot call to mind a single instance, ancient 
or modern, in the death of any Christian of 
whom we ever read or heard, in which any por- 
tion of the language of exultant faith, such as 
is not uncommon on the death-bed, referred, 
even remotely, to a hope of a bodily resurrection. 
The instincts of such an hour, if not, indeed, 
the inspirations, ignore all creeds, and seize the 
beautiful and truthful, in spite of former opinions ; 
and Paradise, with its central personage, the 
blessed Redeemer, and with the loved ones of 
life gone on before, opens up to the realizing 
faith. This may be light, neither from the Script- 
ures nor from science, upon the darkness which 
hangs around the mode of man's immortality. 
Let us call it light from experience. 

If Paul ever taught the doctrine of a bodily 



PAUL'S CHANGE OF VIEW. 163 

resurrection, by letter or by sermon, as we are 
sure he never did, his dying faith denied his 
living creed and seized the sublimer and more 
comforting truths of Christ's teachings. In youth 
he had been ambitious of earthly fame, and had, 
as he supposed, much in which he might glory ; 
but, that he might win Christ, he renounced all 
this, counting all things loss which he had most 
cherished in the line of his former purposes, and 
he learned to glory in the cross only. If, in his 
earlier ministry, he had partaken of the common 
mistake of the disciples, and imagined that Christ 
would soon appear with pomp and great power, 
certainly before his own death, (i Thess. iv., 
15-17), this hope, long deferred, had faded away. 
The twelve years which had elapsed between 
the writing of the letters in which this belief is 
so confidently expressed and the time of his last 
imprisonment at Rome had chastened his early 
ambitions, and now, no longer expecting such a 
display, he appropriates the best of the promises 
to his own use, and says with true Christian 
triumph — " Henceforth " — from this very time — 
" there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, 
which the Lord, the Righteous Judge, shall give 
me at that day, and not to me only, but to all 
them who love his appearing." 

It is not certain that Paul had wholly aban- 
doned the views of his earlier life relative to the 
second coming of Christ : he probably had not ; 
but it is certain that he refers to the appearing 
of his Lord now more in the sense implied by 
Christ in his parables than in the sense implied 
in his own letters to the Thessalonians. Like the 
wise virgins he was watching for his Lord, and 
ready to receive him, having fought a good fight, 
and having finished the course, and having kept 



164 NO INTERMEDIATE EXISTENCE 

the faith. His dying faith sees no half-way place 
between him and the society of his Saviour. 
There was with him no sundering of the man into 
parts, one part to decay in the ground for ages, 
and the other to wander, meanwhile, a shapeless, 
naked ghost, in some intermediate place of con- 
scious existence, only partially enjoying the 
beatitudes of the future life. To inject such a 
sentiment into this language of holy triumph 
would be to rob it of every element of beauty 
and comfort. As it stands, it expresses the de- 
voted martyr's faith that the man Paul was not 
only ready for the sacrifice, but that the crown 
was for him. " There is laid up for me, a 
crown." 

We can better appreciate this declaration of 
faith in the dying hour by placing it by the side 
of Paul's own language when purposely* discuss- 
ing the question of death and immortality. Fie 
says, in the fourth chapter of Second Corinthians : 
" For we know that if our earthly house of this 
tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of 
God, a house not made "with hands, eternal in 
the heavens." Such a declaration of opinion on 
such a subject, made when writing directly upon 
it, is worth a thousand remote allusions to the 
probable coming of Christ, to take vengeance 
upon his enemies and to reward his friends, as 
defining Paul's views of the mode of man's 
immortality. 

Here he says, the body is merely an earthly 
house, a temporary tabernacle, a tent for a way- 
faring man, but no part of the man himself; but 
when this is dissolved by death, we have a build- 
ing of God, a house not made with hands, essen- 
tially different from this tabernacle. This is 
temporary, that is eternal; this is earthly, that 



THROUGH DEA TH TO INSTANT LIFE. 165 

is in heaven ; a building of God — our home. Let 
it be borne in mind that the apostle says : We 
have, not that we shall have away down in the 
ages to come. The entire context is of the same 
import. To be unclothed of the earthly is to be 
clothed upon with the heavenly; to depart is to 
be with Christ. What a beautiful supplement 
this is to the lengthy discussion on the same sub- 
ject in the fifteenth chapter of the former epistle, 
while that discussion beautifies and corroborates 
this. " It is sown in corruption, it is raised in in- 
corruption, it is dissolved a natural body, it is 
renewed a spiritual body." We lay off an earthly 
house, we take on a building of God — all in the 
present tense.* 

There is something touchingly beautiful in the 
dying moments of Stephen. Amidst a shower 
of stones, he looked steadfastly into heaven and 
saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the 
right hand of God ; and he died saying : " Lord 
Jesus, receive my spirit." There is here no allu- 
sion to a heathen Hades as a half-way place 
between earth and Heaven, but his vision caught 
a glimpse of the Father and the Son in Heaven y 



* There is much plausibility in the conjecture that our spirit-life 
is to be attained by the rising of a spirit-form from the earthly house 
at the moment of death, so resembling the earthly form as to be 
readily recognizable by the eye of spirit, and often by genuine clair- 
voyance. There are instances innumerable in which the dying have 
recognized and spoken to those who had died long before, and many 
instances, well authenticated, where the dead have appeared to dis- 
tant acquaintances almost at the instant of their departure, and a 
long time before the news of their death had reached them in the 
ordinary channel. Possibly, in the ages not far remote, clairvoyance 
may be reduced to something like a science, which may not only 
confirm the fact of man's immortality, but throw some light upon 
the mode. Its facts are not, even now, to be dismissed with a sneer, 
or to be treated as exceptional phenomena confined to the illiterate 
or the superstitious. 



166 . THE NEARNESS OF HE A VEN. 

and to them, and not to the society of naked 
ghosts, he expected to go. 

The most remarkable feature of this dying 
scene was the unvailing of the soul, the uncloth- 
ing of the real man, while yet that soul, the real 
man, could communicate through fleshly organs 
with those around. It was not through fleshly 
eyes that he saw the glory of God, and Jesus 
standing at the right hand of God, but with the 
eyes of the spirit man. This he called the open- 
ing of Heaven, but it was only the opening of 
the vail which so thinly intervenes between that 
fair country and those who, like Stephen, are 
watching and waiting for the appearance of their 
Master, whether he come by violence, or by the 
slower steps of disease. It was an experience 
too, which was not to be confined to Stephen, but 
all along the ages it has been often repeated in the 
death of those who have died in the Lord ; show- 
ing that Heaven is not, locally, so very far away, 
and that the man goes at once into the society 
of the blest, and of God, and of Christ, without 
the intervention of any intermediate place.* 



* We find the following beautiful and Scriptural paragraph in the 
work of the late Bishop D. W. Clark, entitled, Man all Immortal. It 
is, indeed, in very uncongenial company, seeing that the object of the 
book is to prove the resurrection of the material body. If this 
extract be true, his arguments, though a thousand fold stronger to 
prove a bodily resurrection, must vanish as mist before the rising sun. 
This is true, as well as beautiful, and the chilly sentence which intro- 
duces it cannot neutralize it, nor the pages of argument which follow 
disprove it. 

Anticipating its fatal effect on his unscriptural and unreasonable 
argument, he says, byway of apology : " It is generally admitted that 
the full consummation of* bliss is not realized till the resurrection.'' 
Admitted by whom, forsooth? By those who are conscious that their 
resurrection dogma is in the face of such plain Scriptural truths, but 
not by Paul, nor Stephen, nor John, nor Peter, nor by any dying saint ! 
This is the paragraph : 

" The righteous dead are represented as being with Christ. Such 



VISIONS OF DYING SAINTS. 167 

We say that such experiences, though com- 
paratively rare, are not wanting in the common 
walks of Christian life. Thousands and tens of 
thousands of dying Christians have, in like man- 
ner, not with clouded reason nor excited imag- 
ination, but in the calm of a triumphant death, 
recognized the presence of former loved ones 
and of other spiritual beings, either angels or the 
angel-like appearance of the just made perfect, all 
unseen by others, but unmistakably present to the 
unvailed eye of immortality. We need not give 
instances. They might lack authenticity, with 
those especially who are determined by their 
chilly faith to put off the day of reunion to that 



seems to have been the view of the first martyr when he cried, 
1 Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.' Such also seemed to be the view of 
Paul, when he expressed a desire to be [not in the place of separate 
spirits, somewhere this side, but] with Christ, which is far better. 
And, again, when not only speaking for himself, but for the great 
body of believers, he says, 'Therefore, we are always confident, 
knowing that whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from 
the Lord. We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent 
from the body and to be present with the Lord* The apostle here 
expresses the strongest conviction that believers, from the moment of 
death, instead of being in a separate place are with the Lord. But 
where is the Lord ? Most certainly he has not only ascended on 
high, but He has entered into heaven itself. From these facts it 
is clearly evident that death ushers the believers into the immediate 
and glorious presence of Christ. 

1 One gentle sigh their fetter breaks, 
We scarce can say they are gone, 
Before the willing spirit takes 
Her mansion near the throne.' 

How consoling such a truth ! To know that we shall be with 
Christ sweetens the bitterness of the dying agony. Death removes 
us from our kindred here, but it brings us into the presence of that 
friend who is dearer than any brother." Page 191. 

To all of which we most heartily say Amen ! But where is. left 
any bodily resurrection, if this be true ? The italics and capitals and 
brackets are all the bishop's. It will not answer to say that the writer 
predicated all this of the soul as only a part of the man. He speaks 
of " the righteous dead." " Death ushers the believers." " Believers, 
from the moment of death, &c." 



168 CONTINUED LIFE THE COMMON BELIEF. 

remote and ever-receding- hour, when the sea 
shall give up the bodies which have fallen into it, 
and the grave shall restore the bodies which it 
has covered. Every neighborhood of Christians 
and every age has furnished repeated examples 
of such visions, in the death of mature Christians ; 
as if the Father and the Son would not leave us 
without witnesses of the early and permanent 
joys of the spirit land. 

Nor is the idea of a continued personal exist- 
ence peculiar to Jacob, or David, or Abraham, or 
Paul, or Stephen. In spite of the demoralizing 
tendency of that unscriptural and unreasonable 
doctrine which separates man into parts, at death, 
and sends one part to dust, and thence through 
thousands of successive material changes, until a 
loud trumpet shall arrest its career; and which 
sends the other part to some vast receptacle of 
naked ghosts, there to be half-happy, or hall- 
miserable, until the other part shall rejoin it, 
man instinctively clings to the Scriptural doctrine 
of a continuous life when required to apply his 
notions of immortality to himself. The genuine 
Christian man's faith is better than his creed, 
when that intervenes between himself and heav- 
en, and he bids defiance to the great gulf which 
superstition and the traditions of men had fixed 
between him and the truth. Like Paul and 
Stephen, he seizes the immortal at once, how- 
ever much his education and former mode of 
thinking might have led him to a different con- 
clusion in health. 

We appeal to the experience of every one 
who has parted with loved ones who died in 
the hope of a blessed immortality, to say if fore- 
most in their thoughts of them is not that they 
are with Christ: not in some inferior sense, but 



THE CREEDS IGNORED. 1G9 

in the fullness of heavenly bliss ? There was, in- 
deed, a preciousness in their bodily forms, through 
which alone we had held intercourse with them, 
which made us consign those bodies to the 
tomb with reluctance,, even after they became 
offensive to our senses; but there was something 
of the same tenderness towards the clothing they 
had worn ; and many an unused drawer often dis- 
closes to the heart that refuses to be comforted 
the little stockings or half-worn shoes of the 
angel-babe, or the garments of the more advanced 
in years, still sacred because of their former 
association with the loved and lost. It would 
not be strange that for the moment we both 
hoped and desired to see that form again, as we 
had already arranged to preserve many memen- 
toes of the departed; but time effaces that long- 
ing, while the union with the immortal grows 
stronger as we draw nearer to it by advancing 
age, and other indications of a speedy reunion. 

There is even in the forms of speech of the 
dying Christian, all so nearly identical in purport, 
an argument which is not to be despised. The 
young and the old, the learned and the illiterate, 
all ignore that vast hiatus which the creeds of 
men have interposed between earth and heaven. 

A few years ago the talented Dr. Olin re- 
tired from his class in the Wesleyan University to 
linger a few months and die. During the early 
part of his last sickness, while yet able to walk the 
room, a sweet child of his, some two years of age, 
sickened and sank rapidly. One day it beckoned 
to the father to take it up. He took it in his arms 
and walked a few times across the room when 
his failing strength admonished him that he must 
lay it in the crib again. Just as he was doing 
so the prattler said : " Pa, kiss baby ! " He kissed 



170 ' DR. OLIN'S LAST VIEWS. 

it tenderly. Then it added, " God, take baby ! " 
and in a moment the struggle was over. God 
had taken the sweet one, answering its request 
as promptly and tenderly as the earthly father 
had in giving the final kiss. Let it not be said 
that this was the utterance of a precocious child, 
or a mere coincidence ; rather let us say that it 
was the All-Father perfecting praise in one of 
his little ones, revealing to it things which are 
hidden from many of the wise and prudent of 
earth. 

A few weeks later the crisis came with the 
father himself, and he knew that within a few 
hours more he must die. He had been a believer 
in the doctrine of a future general resurrection, 
and for aught that we know he was then, in 
theory ; but how was he in its application to his 
personal faith? Did he call his friends around 
him and descant on the glories of the resurrection 
morning, and point to the time far, far distant, 
when he and his beloved child and the wife of his 
youth, now soon to become a widow, should be 
brought up from the sleep of ages? Not he. 
Calling his wife to him in a moment of calmness 
and serenity, he said: "I am about to die. In 
a few days you will lay this body in the grave; 
but do not say that you have buried your hus- 
band. Your husband will be in heaven /" 

This was no precocious child, using language 
which it did not understand. It was no obscure, 
illiterate, excitable creature, half crazed by opi- 
ates. It was the great Olin, the cultivated scholar, 
the mature Christian, leaping, in his dying faith, 
every gulf which superstition and tradition had 
wrongfully interposed between him and the soci- 
ety of his babe, and of his Redeemer; and ex- 
pressing, in well-weighed language, the same faith 



DR. COOKMAN' S DEATH. 171 

which Paul and Stephen had uttered in their 
dying hours. 

The closing hours of the late Dr. Cookman, 
of New York, were replete with instruction and 
comfort. . For days and weeks his conversation, 
as it related to the near approach of death indi- 
cated the triumph of one whose life was hid with 
Christ in God. A few hours before his death, 
calling his wife to his bed-side, he informed her 
that he had just had a glorious vision. Though 
it seemed much like a dream, he knew that it was 
not a dream, for he was awake. He had seen his 
father, and brother, and child, and many other 
former companions of life, each of whom had bid- 
den him welcome to the mansion prepared for 
him in the better world. His account of the in- 
terviews was calm and circumstantial. They had 
evidently been, to him, realities. Is not such an 
incident light from experience, which we dare 
not ignore in our inquiry into the mode of man's 
immortality? Those who insist that heaven is a 
far-away country, inclosed with jasper walls, 
within which a part of the man is imprisoned, 
semi-happy, until after some future general resur- 
rection, will not deny the fact ; but they assume 
that the soul — only a part of the man — was sent 
from that far-away home on a special mission for 
this special occasion. We prefer the more Script- 
ural and rational explanation of this, and of thou- 
sands upon thousands of similar experiences, 
which assumes that the soul is the man, and that 
these men were just what they seemed to the 
dying Cookman to be. Dying, they had been 
unclothed of the mortal, material, earthy body 
and they had put on immortality, and so were 
ever with the Lord, and like him. They were as 
he is, they are now as he is, with a spiritual body 



172 DRS. GUTHRIE AND McLEAN, 

fashioned from a physical body, if Christ exists 
now in that form, but not otherwise. But their 
natural bodies had decomposed in the sea and in 
the grave. The honored father's body had gone 
to ocean depths with the ill-fated steamer thirty 
years before, while the bodies of the others had 
been buried with the usual care, yet here were 
these men communing with this man. Their 
spiritual bodies had not been made from earthly 
bodies, yet they had spiritual bodies, easily re- 
cognized by the dying man. 

Of course we cannot prove that the appear- 
ances of those loved ones was not an exceptional 
visit but a habitual presence, and that they be- 
came visible to the dying man as the chariots and 
horsemen of Israel did to the servant of Elijah, 
and as the person of Jesus did to the dying Ste- 
phen; but the contrary is equally beyond^ the 
possibility of demonstration. To the conception 
of the writer these unnumbered instances of 
spirit-recognition are utterly irreconcilable with 
that theory of future life which sends the soul, as 
only a part of the man, at death "far, far away," 
to a land from which there is no return, except 
when sent occasionally. Our dead are ever liv- 
ing, and ever-present, though unseen. 

A few hours later he said to his son : " I have 
been sweeping by the gates all day," uncon- 
sciously and without premeditation using the 
language of the dying to indicate his notion of a 
continued personal existence. Did any dying 
man ever speak of being sundered into parts? 
It is always I, myself, my personal existence. 

The late venerable Dr. Guthrie, of Scotland, 
was a theoretical believer in the traditional faith 
of his church, as to a future general resurrec- 
tion, yet, like ten thousands of others, in his better 



PA YSON A ND MA SON. 1 73 

faith he often broke the shackles and stood above 
the dogma, unwittingly renouncing it. Said he, 
not long before his death, in one of his eloquent 
flights of personal faith, " They tell me I am old. 
It is not so. I am as young to-day as ever I was. 
It is true these knees are becoming feeble, and 
these limbs are somewhat palsied, and these eyes 
are growing dim; but these eyes are not I, my- 
self, these limbs are not I, myself, this is only the 
house in which I now live. But it will soon be 
taken down, then I will appear in another and a 
better house." 

When Dr. McLean was dying, he said : " I can 
now contemplate clearly the grand scene to which 
I am going." 

" Dr. Payson wrote to a friend just before 
dying : " I might date this letter from the land of 
Beulah, of which I have been some weeks a 
happy inhabitant. The celestial city is full in 
view. Its glories beam upon me ; its breezes fan 
me ; its odors are wafted to me ; its sounds strike 
my ears, and its. spirit is breathed into my heart. 
Nothing separates me from it but the river of 
death, which now appears but an insignificant 
rill, which may be crossed at a single step." 

Dr. Lowell Mason, the sweet singer, died re- 
cently at an advanced age. Long years ago, he 
had buried his first born, a lovely boy, named 
Daniel. Friends stood around him watching the 
ebbing out of life, at the close of a beautiful Sab- 
bath, but all oblivious to the living, whom he 
loved tenderly, and of whom he had just taken 
his final farewell, the dying man opened his eyes, 
and looking upward intently, said : " Daniel, may 
I come?" and then with a smile of recognition, 
he added : " Let me come," and breathed his last. 

" I thought last night I was in heaven," said 



174 BISHOP CLARK. 

a dying Christian lady, the wife of Rev. J. S. 
Barwick, the day before her death ; " and so cap- 
tivated was I with what I heard and saw, that the 
vision has not yet faded away nor is the charm 
broken. I wonder if indeed I was not there." 
Most certainly she was, just as Paul was, there, 
" out of the body." 

We might multiply these examples into vol- 
umes, all tending to show that the language of 
the dying Christian seldom, if ever, refers to the 
doctrine of a future general resurrection, but like 
that of Paul and Stephen, nearly always appre- 
hends an immediate home in the land of immortals, 
whatever may have been their theory in health. 

And it is no answer to the argument which 
we draw from these facts that all Christians be- 
lieve that the soul, meaning only a pait of the 
man, goes to heaven. In these hours of Christian 
triumph the soul becomes the man, and the body 
enters no more into the account than do the 
treasures of earth which are exchanged for the 
bliss of immortality. 

We have given elsewhere an extract from the 
book of the late Bishop D. W. Clark, beautifully 
expressing his faith in the immediate entrance of 
"the righteous dead" into heaven, where Christ is. 
We shall hereafter give another gem from the 
same book expressive of his belief that the dead 
are often with the living. These two sentiments 
blended indicate, as we show elsewhere, that 
heaven is not, locally, so " far, far away" as is 
generally supposed, leaving also, to our notion, 
not the least possible vestige of a bodily resur- 
rection, although they are strangely enough 
found in a book devoted largely to the defense 
of that dogma. 

Bishop Clark has since died. The approach 



THE DYING CHILD. 175 

of death was so gradual and unmistakable that 
he had abundant occasion to speak of the power 
of his faith to give him victory over it, and many 
were the words of. comfort which he gave to his 
family and friends, but none are more precious 
than these : " Our separation will not be a com- 
plete one. I feel that / shall often be with you. 
/ cannot speak words to you, but God, in his ten- 
derness and loving-kindness, will permit me to 
suggest beautiful thoughts to you, and lead your 
minds heavenward. This idea is very present 
with me." 

Later, and only a few hours before his death, 
he said, as he seemed to realize, even now, the 
society of heaven : " Tireless company ! Tireless 
song ! The song of the angels is a glorious song. 
It thrills my ears even now. / am going to join 
the angels' song." 

Here is an eminent Christian scholar who was 
never excitable, and who never expressed his 
ideas loosely, ignoring the creed and, like the 
dying- Paul, rising above his former opinions, 
and in the sublimity of Christian triumph enter- 
ing at once into heaven, yet hovering around the 
loved of life, suggesting, by spirit communings, 
as he says in his book, " beautiful thoughts, and 
leading their minds heavenward." See how he 
says, me, my, I, my personal self, not a mere frag- 
ment of a man. 

Long years ago, though it seems but yester- 
day, the writer of this book was called upon to 
suffer his first great bereavement in the death of 
his first born, a lovely boy three years of age. 
The day before his departure the little fellow ask- 
ed, with child-like simplicity : " Ma, will the 
angels open the gates for me as soon as I get 
there?" "Why do you ask that?" said the 



176 PERSONAL EXPERIENCE. 

anxious mother. " Because I am going to be 
an angel," was the prompt reply ; this little 
untaught one shrinking instinctively or by 
inspiration from the idea .so cherished by 
many men of ripe years and profound scholar- 
ship, of remaining outside of the city of God, 
even for an instant. No one but parents who 
have been stricken in like manner can realize the 
grief of that hour of separation, and no one who 
has not faith in the immediate immortality of the 
dead can even remotely imagine the sweet bliss 
which mingled with the tears of sorrow, as the 
bereaved parents said, while closing the eyes of 
the departed : " He has already received an an- 
swer to his interesting question. The gates are 
open for him. He is with the Lord, ' for of such 
is the kingdom of heaven.' " 

In the room where these lines are written, 
so recently that the fragrance of the hour yet 
lingers, a daughter, just entering the maturity 
of womanhood, was called to die. Calmly and 
patiently, through months of intense suffering, 
she approached the final hour with many expres- 
sions of trust in God which would have done 
honor to a war-worn veteran. The last day 
finally came, after a night of indescribable pain : 
cold limbs, a failing pulse, and difficult breathing 
all indicated the closing scene. Addressing her 
mother, she said : " You will not have to watch 
with me to-night, for this poor, suffering body 
will be at rest, but I shall be with my Saviour." 
Shortly afterwards, having taken an affectionate 
farewell of the family, she reached out her 
hand, cold in death, as if to embrace some one 
unseen by the rest. With a smile of recog- 
nition she began to call by name departed 
members of the family, and others of her ac- 



SPIRIT LA WS. 177 

quaintances who had died, adding-, after some 
minutes of such greetings : " Here we are, an 
unbroken family in heaven, washed in the blood 
of the Lamb. Washed, washed, washed ! " and 
in a few moments she was in the spirit-world.* 
Is it any unwarrantable deduction from these 
scenes (and. they are by no means of infrequent 
occurrence) that the dead live, and that they 

* We do not object to classifying such phenomena as this recog- 
nition of friends under the general head of clairvoyance, although 
so little is known of that mental or spiritual perception which is 
called by this name. Its moral lesson will suffer nothing by such 
classification, for the joyousness of such visions is never granted to 
others than those who die in the Lord. The facts of clairvoyance 
are yet too few and too detached to establish any doctrine by them, 
while they are too many and too well authenticated to be wholly 
ignored in any investigation of mind in the body, or spirit out of" 
the body. There may be much more in it than we are willing to 
believe, while there is too little to command our assent to all its 
pretensions. 

The properties of electricity and of the magnet were, until re- 
cently, quite as mysterious. "Who shall say that some Franklin or 
Morse may not yet utilize, in some unexpected way, the half-known 
but wholly unintelligible laws of spirit ? 

We only add, in this connection, that while such visions are fre- 
quent with the dying, while they can yet communicate with us 
through the ordinary channels, there are instances, which are en- 
titled to the utmost credence, of natural clairvoyants witnessing 
not only the spirits of other departed ones in the room, but that of 
the dying joining the group and departing together. We can not 
comprehend how this is, and, while we believe that it has occurred, 
we cannot prove it to the incredulous ; hence we do not introduce it 
as an argument for others, although it has an influence on our own 
mind. We believe, with Paul, that we have a spiritual house ; in 
other words, that the soul is the man, and that when it leaves — when we 
leave — the body we are with the Lord, and clothed at once with our 
house which is heavenly — with a shape and form, a perfectly distinct 
organization, a body if you please, though it be not made of clay as 
these bodies are. Far hence be the notion, entertained not only by 
the illiterate, but by some men of education, that the spirit is without 
body or parts, a mere shapeless bit of gas or ether ! There is neither 
philosophy, nor experience, nor revelation in any such a notion, and 
the sooner it is wholly discarded the sooner the world will begin to 
learn something of the mode of man's immortality, from the light of 
experience. 



1 78 DEA TH IS LIFE. 

live in forms that are recognizable by spirit? 
Such visions, so oft repeated, and so well au- 
thenticated, constitute as legitimate a source of 
knowledge in reference to the mode of man's 
immortality as anything in the Bible itself. 
They are beautiful illustrations of the language 
of Christ : " I am the resurrection and the life, 
and whosoever believeth in me shall never die." 
Such a faith, and such departures, divest the 
farewell of every ingredient of death. It is no 
death, it is rather life begun. 

There 's no such thing as death, 

To those who live aright ; 
'Tis but the racer casting off 

What most impedes his flight. 
'Tis but one little act 

Life's drama must contain, 
One struggle, keener than the rest, 

And then an end of pain. 

There 's no such thing as death, 

That which is thus miscalled 
Is life escaping from the chains 

That have so long enthralled. 
'Tis a once-hidden star 

That pierces through the night. 
To shine in gentle radiance forth 

Amid its kindred light. 

There 's no such thing as death, 
In nature nothing dies, 

From each sad remnant of decay- 
Some forms of life arise ; 

The faded leaf that falls, 

All sere and brown to earth, 

Ere long will mingle with the shapes 
That give the floweret birth. 

There 's no such thing as death, 

'Tis but the blossom spray, 
Dropping before the coming fruit 

That seeks the summer's ray, 
'Tis but the bud displaced 

Before the perfect flower. 
'Tis only faith exchanged for sight, 

And weariness to power. 



CHAPTER XIV. 
Common Theories of the Resurrection Examined. 

THE scope of this discussion does not contem- 
plate controversy. Our design has been 
to state the doctrine of man's immortality, as 
we find it taught in the Bible, and as illustrated 
by experience and science so far as these sources 
of light can furnish any information upon the 
subject, with as little reference to the opinions 
of others as would be consistent with a perfect 
understanding of the question. Least of all have 
we intended to array what men may call science 
against the teachings of revelation. There can 
be no antagonism between science and revelation. 
Any seeming difference must result from a mis- 
understanding of one or the other, or of both. 

Having seen how the absolutely . universal 
opinions of former ages upon some Bible ques- 
tions have been utterly overthrown by the 
Biblical and scientific research of a later period, 
dare any one assume that we have attained the 
ultima thule of knowledge on any subject? 'Is 
it impious to submit any dogma of religion or 
philosophy to a new investigation ? In the light 
of past experience, is there either sense or argu- 
ment in parading even " the unanimous assent " 
of this age, or any former age, in behalf of any 
doctrine of morals or of science? 

It is proper, perhaps, to briefly examine some 
of the more common theories of men on the 
subject of a literal bodily resurrection. We say 



180 THEORIES DIFFER. 

theories, for most who have written in behalf 
of this dogma have felt it incumbent upon them 
to devise some easy way for its accomplishment, 
seeing that Paul had neglected or refused to do 
so necessary a thing. 

Humanly speaking, it is not a thing incredi- 
ble for God to raise the dead, as Christ was 
raised, to whose resurrection the apostle referred 
when he confronted the judge with this propo- 
sition, but it is incredible that He should carry 
out any of the many programmes of those who 
believe that the earthly bodies of men, after 
undergoing the endless mutations of ages, shall 
be rebuilt and then reanimated by the soul's 
returning from heaven or hell, or from some 
half-way place, and that the man, thus completed, 
shall be again returned to happiness or misery, 
to finish an eternity of joy or woe, suitably in- 
tensified by this reunion. 

The shades of difference between the theorists 
who thus undertake to tell us how the Almighty 
will do this incredible thing are almost endless. 
And no wonder. Having no common basis, and 
the most indefinite common notion of the result, 
they war against each other as much as against 
the truth ; agreeing in only the one idea that 
there is to be, at what they are pleased to call 
the end of the world, a resurrection of the 
bodies of men— the actual flesh and bones of 
this life. 

We assume that the resurrection of dead 
bodies is incredible, because it implies a constant 
infraction of every known law of matter, and 
because God has never indicated, by revelation 
or by his works, that he would do this strange 
thing. If there was any analogy in nature, or 
any promise in revelation, we would gladly ac« 



USEFUL ANALOGIES. 181 

cept the Word of God as conclusive against all 
human incredulity or human weakness ; but there 
is neither. 

■ It is a favorite argument with those who 
teach a literal resurrection of the body, to hunt 
up analogies; but every one they nnd turns 
against their doctrine. The return of day after 
the darkness of night is One favorite analogy. 
But night is not death. The sun does not die 
when it goes down. It is not an inapt illustra- 
tion of man's continuous existence, for 

" The sun that sets 
Beyond the western wave is not extinct. 
It brightens in another hemisphere, 
And gilds another region with its rays," 

as the soul, the man, ceasing to live on earth, 
lives in the land of immortality. 

The return of spring is often eloquently 
paraded, if not as an argument, yet as an apt 
illustration of the resurrection of the bodies of 
men. Alas ! nothing which dies in autumn ever 
lives again in the spring. There is a live germ, 
or a live root, or a live stock, which puts on 
beauty on the return of spring, but the dead leaf 
or the dead branch, like the dead body, never 
lives again. It may illustrate the continuous 
existence of the man which, unclothed of the 
present body, is clothed upon with the heavenly, 
but it sheds no light upon the future life of 
dead bodies. 

The change from caterpillar to butterfly is 
often referred to as almost divine in its teaching. 
But the dead caterpillar never becomes a butter- 
fly. The shell of the living caterpillar never 
lives again, after the vital part escapes as a 
butterfly. There is in this change no death to 



132 THE SOUL, THE MAN. 

the insect, but only to its rougher tabernacle. 
This transition from a lower to a higher mode 
of life may not inaptly illustrate the escape of 
the soul, the real man, from its earthly form, 
but it gives no countenance to the revival of the 
body thus abandoned, for the caterpillar never 
returns to the house it left. It is content with 
the more beautiful butterfly life. The dead 
' " slug " never lives again. 

The foundation truth of all 'which relates to 
man has already been noticed. It is that the 
soul, the spirit, the mind, is the man, distinct 
and separate from the body, which is only the 
temporary dwelling-place of the man. We think 
that we have shown in the second chapter of this 
book that the most rational construction which 
can be placed upon the Mosaic account of crea- 
tion is in accordance with this view. And after 
all, this is the common rational view which all 
the more intelligent Christians take, though all 
may not have the same method of stating it, 
and some may at times even argue that the body, 
too, is a part of the man. Bishop Ames recently 
expressed this idea in his own inimitable style 
when speaking of an old man : " It is true his 
hair grows thin, but the hair is not he ; his eye- 
sight may be less keen than in earlier manhood, 
but the eye is not he; the hearing may be a little 
dull, but that is not he ; HE is within, and the 
real he is ever youthful." 

This form of man, this curiously wrought 
piece of machinery which we call the body, or 
the earthly house of this tabernacle, originally 
made of the dust of the ground, is purely mate- 
rial, and the particles of matter used in its con- 
struction lose none of the properties of matter 
by being employed in constituting a human body. 



THE BOD Y MA TERIAL. 183 

The fact that this machinery is so. constituted as 
to propagate its species does not, so far as rea- 
son or revelation shows, change the nature oi 
the matter thus used. 

It is the same to-day. We eat, and drink, and 
breathe, and the matter thus taken into the body 
becomes a part of the body through the opera- 
tions of the "wonderfully made " machinery of 
our physical structure. During the first years of 
life some of this is appropriated to growth, in our 
addition to supplying the waste which from child- 
hood is going on.- For a few years more it barely 
supplies the waste, and maintains the man in the 
vigor of manhood. After a while it cannot do 
even that much, and the man fails in strength and 
size, until decrepitude foretells death. In some 
cases this machinery, working badly,, produces 
deformity. It may result in distressing obesity, 
or in inconvenient leanness, or some malforma- 
tion may be indicated by rickets, or humpback, 
or lameness. 

We know that from childhood to the grave 
there is a constant change in the material of which 
the body is composed. Men dare not sleep in 
close, small rooms, lest the matter which has once 
done its work in the body and has escaped 
through the lungs and pores return to damage 
the system. It is this law of decay which makes 
crowded churches and lecture-rooms unwhole- 
some without suitable ventilation. Waste or 
decay is a universal law of organized matter, for 
the repair of which food is taken and digested, to 
be in its turn cast off as effete. 

Now, it is a thing incredible that God should 
attach such importance to the matter that may 
have been at any time .a part of a man that 
he takes special care of it, and ultimately gathers 



184 ABSURDITIES CONSIDERED. 

it all together, that it may be "reinfused" by the 
soul, and live for ever in an unchangeable state. 
It is incredible, because to gather together all the 
matter which may have constituted any given 
man's body during an ordinary average life 
would, as a simple, inevitable, undeniable fact, 
make a huge, unwieldy mass for the resurrection 
body. 

To avoid this undesirable result — we do not 
say absurdity, for that does not mean anything 
with a man who accepts the do'gma of the resur- 
rection in its popular sense, since he defies all 
reason in reaching his conclusion, and gravely 
answers that the resurrection is above human 
comprehension — but to avoid such an undesir- 
able, not to say improbable, result, and to make 
the resurrection body a model of beauty and pro- 
portion, the crippled, and the deformed, and the 
old having been all recast, it is gravely assum- 
ed by men of no less note than the late Bishop 
Kingsley, that this difficulty is surmounted by 
claiming that the body to be raised is not the 
matter which has belonged to the man through 
life, and been from time to time thrown off as 
waste, but simply the body that died. That 
died when, forsooth? Every vital action is 
death itself. Every breath we exhale carries 
away dead matter. It is only when the dead 
matter of the body is promptly dismissed that 
the man enjoys good health. A healthy man 
does not die daily, but he dies constantly, so far 
as the body is concerned. When can it be said 
that the man died who had wasted away fcom 
robust manhood to a mere skeleton, because the 
vital processes had, for a season, thrown off more 
dead matter than they had taken on new from the 
usual source of supply ? What is the specific arti- 



PHILOSOPHIC FA CTS. 1 85 

cle of death to such a person, but the conclusion 
of a process of death which had had the better of 
the vital processes for weeks, or months, or 
years? Is only that remnant of a body the body 
which dies? and shall that which died last week, 
or last month, or last year have no affinity for this 
last remnant? Why should this remnant be more 
sacred than its fellow particles of earth of the 
same origin and of precisely the same nature, 
which had once, with it, constituted the body 
of the man? 

The accretions of flesh and bone which build 
up the man from the child are regarded by 
those who believe in a resurrection of the natu- 
ral body as legitimate matter from which to 
construct the future resurrection body, but 
when the imperfect workings of the wonderful 
machinery take on a superabundance of fat, or 
muscle, or lymph, and the person becomes a 
monster, all dropsical and deformed by the un- 
healthy accretions, it becomes the province of the 
resurrection to eliminate all this superabundance 
of matter, though to the test of science every 
particle of that monster is like every other 
particle in its ultimate constituents, and the 
great chemist — Decay — preys alike upon all. 

Amputation sometimes removes at an instant 
half or more of the material structure, perhaps 
already putrid and offensive. Does that remain 
any more a part of the man than if an equal 
amount had been removed by disease? If not, 
then . the body which dies may die legless or 
armless ; and must not the resurrection body be 
the same, if only the body which dies is raised? 
If not, why not? 

If the subject were one upon which we were 
allowed to reason, the fact that in the endless 



186 A STRANGE OPINION. 

mutations of matter it must often happen that 
a portion of the body of one man becomes a 
part of the body of another, as when one man 
eats another, or when a man eats a fish which 
had eaten a man, might suggest a difficulty : but 
this possibility of confusion is dismissed by the 
believers in the doctrine, by referring the whole 
subject to the unexplained mysteries of God's 
unknown laws. 

Pursuing this subject with such results, and 
being confronted, though not answered, by such 
a reference, gives poignancy to the satire of the 
lecturer in the law school who informed his 
pupils that lawyers must become better logi- 
cians than preachers, for legal sophistry could 
be exposed and its conclusions overthrown 
by the better argument, while the preacher, 
vanquished, could retreat behind : " Great is the 
mystery of godliness," and be safe. 

The discussion of this subject has, however, 
driven the advocates of a future general resur- 
rection to numerous explanations to get rid of 
obvious objections to it, from the standpoint of 
reason and science. One, giving many good 
reasons why the resurrection can not apply to 
the bodies of men at all, yet clinging to the 
tradition of a general resurrection at some future 
"last day," and to the idea of a compound ex- 
istence, a soul and a body, as man, sends the 
soul to Hades at death, where it is to remain 
until the end of the world, whatever that is, 
when it will be " resurrected," and sent to Para- 
dise or perdition, according as it has been good 
or bad in life. 

The principal proof of such a position is the 
supposition that the Bible says that Christ went 
and preached to the spirits in Hades immediately 



CONSER VA TION OF MA TTER. 1ST 

after his crucifixion, whereas, according to ap- 
pointment with the thief, he went directly to 
Paradise. But this theory assumes that there is 
a good end and a bad end of that underworld, 
separated by a great gulf, and that Christ ac- 
companied the penitent thief as far as the Para- 
dise department, and then crossed over the gulf 
to preach to those who had been disobedient in 
the days of Noah. After this he returned to the 
upper world, in time to be present at the resur- 
rection of his body. To our mind this seems 
like the most reprehensible trifling. 

This manufacturing of a place for departed 
spirits, and dividing into compartments for the 
convenience of the different kinds of spirits, is 
not altogether new; but to make the resurrec- 
tion apply to bringing up spirits from the "vasty 
d^ep" is rather a novel way of getting rid of 
the objections to a bodily resurrection, by plung- 
ing into greater absurdities, if possible. 

The endless changes of matter, from one body 
to another, and the possibility of its becoming a 
part of many bodies, are facts fatal to the idea of 
a literal resurrection, and have given rise to many 
conjectures and theories. One is, that God has 
made it a universal law of matter, that when it 
has once been in a human form at the hour of 
death it never can become any part of any other 
human body. This is assuming a law for matter 
which is not known to exist, but which is 
known not to exist, for human flesh is identical 
in all its essential properties with all other 
flesh, is derived from the same material, through 
the same process, and is acted upon by gastric 
juices and other solvents, the same as other 
flesh. 



CHAPTER XV. 

Further Objections to the Common Theories of a Bodily 
Resurrection. 

AS a matter of fact, we know that in many 
cases men have eaten other men, to say 
nothing of the remoter facts alluded to in the 
former chapter. How then can it be truly said, 
that the matter which composes one human body 
can never become a part of another body? This 
absurd assumption can be maintained only by 
the further absurdity, that only a small part of 
what every man regards as his body is really 
his body, and that all else is mere foreign mat- 
ter. Any doctrine of science, or morals, or 
religion, which depends upon such an outrage 
upon the common sense of mankind, cannot 
command the respect of thinking men. 

The trimmings of our nails, or of our hair, 
which we so unceremoniously throw away, were, 
only a few months ago, food in our mouths, and 
had. reached a fitness for this ignominious des- 
tiny through what we call " growth," which is 
only a comprehensive word for the action upon 
that food, of the stomach and its juices and the 
other parts of the machinery of this wonderful 
structure. While eliminating the matter which 
became nails and hair, that same machinery had 
separated from the same food other particles 
which were dismissed from the body without 
the aid of scissors or knife, some being cast off 



A CCRE TION AND EXCRE TION. 189 

through the lungs, some through sensible or in- 
sensible perspiration, some through the urinary 
organs, and some, not well adapted to passing 
again to the outer-world through either the 
lungs, or the kidneys, or the pores of the skin, is 
"cast out into the draught." 

Can any good reason be given why any one 
portion of this waste ever was more truly a 
part of the body than any other portion? That 
it took longer for a given portion of food to ful- 
fill its mission and escape to the outer-world 
through nail or hair than it took another por- 
tion to reach the same fate through the lungs, 
or the skin, or otherwise, makes that matter no 
more sacred than this, nor any more a part of 
the body while in transitu. Neither bone nor 
muscle, blood nor lymph, is exempt from the 
law of accretion and excretion. Every part of 
the body takes on new particles from every meal 
that is eaten, and continues to cast off its effete 
matter to make room for the new. 

Can any such matter, having a common ori- 
gin, and all tending to a common destiny, be 
held to be more .sacred and honorable than any 
other part? The cornea of the eye, or the 
enamel of the teeth, is of the cold, lifeless earth, 
and passes in common with other portions to 
the same end. 

Physiologists agree that the phenomenon 
called digestion begins immediately upon the 
entrance of the food into the mouth of a healthy 
man, although -some minutes elapse before the 
work has progressed sufficiently to be apprecia- 
ble by the tests usually applied ; hence, it at 
once becomes as truly a part of the body of the 
man as it ever becomes. The future blood, and 
bone, and muscle, are indeed only in embryo, but 



190 FOOD, AS A PART OF THE BODY. 

they are there, and that food is no longer bread 
or msat, but flesh, and bone, and tissue, in a 
forming state, which began when the food was 
masticated and mixed with the secretions of the 
mouth. The gray mass which issues from be- 
tween the upper and the nether millstones is 
neither flour nor bran, but it is no longer wheat. 
The manufacture of flour began in the mastica- 
tion of the wheat, as the manufacture of bone 
and flesh began when a like process was under- 
gone by the food in the mouth. 

If it is proper to call flesh or bone a part 
of the body, it is proper to so call the blood. 
If the blood is a part of the body, so is chyle ; 
if chyle is, so is chyme ; if chyme is, so, also, is 
the partly digested food just swallowed. That 
which is left after the separation of the chyle is 
technically called excrement, because it is gener- 
ally more speedily passed out of the system, but, 
until it has passed, it is in truth, no more excre- 
ment than that which enters into the blood, nor is 
it any the less a part of the body. Much of that 
which is thought to be so vital because it becomes 
blood, is excreted through the kidneys, and the 
lungs, and the pores of the skin, and is sent to the 
outer-world long before this so-called excrement 
reaches its destiny through its channel. Indeed, 
every particle of bone, and flesh, and blood, be- 
comes excrement in its turn, and passes away ; 
hence the excrements have all been a part of the 
body, for all parts become excrement. 

Even the effete matter yet within the body 
is as truly a part of the body as that employed 
in the vital processes, for we cannot conceive of 
a healthy body without its due proportion of 
effete matter in the lungs, in the intestines and 
in all the other channels of escape, more or less 



ONE BODY, AS PART OF ANOTHER. 191 

ready to leave the body to make room for its 
new and vital successor. Besides, much of that 
which is vital to one part of the body is effete 
as to another part. Having served its purpose 
in its former capacity, and having departed to 
give place to a fresher portion, it stops, so to 
speak, to vitalize and rejuvenate a later if not a 
lower class of organs, or parts of the body. 

Because a given portion of bone-making mat- 
ter is effete as to blood, is it not a part of the 
body? Is effete bone, passing through muscle and 
tissue, probably giving life and strength to them 
in turn, no longer a part of the body ? It is cer- 
tain that what we choose to call effete matter, in 
itsproper place, waiting only for a proper time to 
be discharged, is as necessary to a healthy action 
of the parts as that which we call vital matter. 
In short, our body is just what we see it. The 
bony structure is not the body, the fleshy struct- 
ure is not the body, the nervous structure is 
not the body, but all these, combined with every 
other portion, constitute the body. A body may 
be sadly diseased, yet it is a body. It may have 
an undue proportion of effete matter — it may 
be nearly decayed — nay, it may be effete in 
death, yet it is a body. 

Hence, the body of one man may become a 
part of the body of another man, and often does ; 
and the objection which such a fact constitutes 
against a future resurrection of fleshly bodies is 
well taken, and is entitled to all the force that 
fact can give. 

Among the latest attempts to reconcile the 
theory of a literal bodily resurrection with the 
known laws of science is that of Dr. Joseph H. 
Wythe. It brings scientific discoveries to bear 
upon the difficulties which science has suggested. 



1 92 RESURRECTION B Y RED UCTION. 

As it is fresh, if not altogether new, we quote 
the following: 

" Much of the matter connected with our 
bodies, during life, is doubtless foreign, and not 
essential to their identity. Nine-tenths of the 
human body consists of water, as has been 
shown by the weight of a corpse which had 
been desiccated in an oven, and of the remain- 
ing tenth part much is material in a state of 
decay, having been used by the vital processes 
and now effete, or being cast off, so that a very 
small portion of the matter of our bodies can 
really be said to be our own* 

" We have seen that, of the total amount of 
material associated with our bodies, physiology 
shows a very small part only which is in a 
nascent condition, or which is being applied to 
vital use, can be said to belong to our bodies. 
Supposing this small part to be indestructible, 
many of the objections to a resurrection, drawn 
from the nourishment of other organized bodies 
will be removed, for both animals and vege- 
tables are built up from the decomposition of 
other beings." — Science and Revelation , pages 
258, 259. m 

This, it must be remembered, is a contribu- 
tion from the medical department, and grapples 
with an objection to the resurrection which is 



* " Our own," indeed ! Whose is it, if it is not ours ? Is any part of 
the body too sacredly ours to be amputated by you doctors? In 
amputating a leg or two, you would probably take away something 
that is neither water nor "effete matter." Would any part of that 
amputated limb still remain "our own"? If the solid portions, 
why not the liquid portions ? And does a portion of the body thus 
removed by your knife remain any more sacredly " our own " than 
the portion which is removed by disease or by your drastic medi- 
cines ? Is there any part of the body which does not, in its turn 
become effete ? 



DR. WHEDON'S EMENDATION. 193 

much better disposed of by the divinity doctors. 
It is far more sensible to assume that if God 
intends to raise dead bodies, he will take 
care of them and raise them intact, than to put 
them in an oven and dry away nine-tenths of 
them, and then reduce the other tenth largely, 
by throwing- away the " effete matter," and 
leaving perhaps not over one-twelfth of the man 
to be raised. The argument is puerile in the 
extreme, and utterly worthless, further than to 
show that there is a real scientific difficulty to 
wrestle with. For if God has made one-twelfth 
of the body of a man indigestible by other men, 
he could have made the whole body indigesti- 
ble. If one-twelfth is indestructible, why may 
not all be ? Besides, this robs the resurrection 
of all its joys to those who attach importance 
to the body. If eleven-twelfths of the body are 
to be dried up in some furnace, or lost in the 
mutation of matter, let the balance go ! It is 
not the body which we loved, but only a very 
insignificant part of it, and that all dried up ! 
If that is the best that science can do, give us 
the preacher's stronghold, " Great is the mystery 
of godliness," and let us believe without any 
reason at all, except that we think God has prom- 
ised it. 

We were not so much surprised to find such 
a bungling apology from a physician as to find 
it indorsed and amended by Dr. Whedon, in 
the Methodist Quarterly Reviczv for 1872, page 
679, thus : 

" When the foreign elements are thus elimi- 
nated, and the true body remains alone, it is 
thereby reduced to one-tenth of its apparent 
magnitude." [Suppose it is, can not God as 
easily take charge of ten-tenths as of one-tenth ?] 



194 DESICCATION UNBIBLICAL. 

" But a still further reduction ensues from the 
abolition of the alimentary canal and generative 
parts of the earthly human system, as both rea- 
son and the New Testament suggest." 

Reason may make such a suggestion to those 
with whom the wish is father to the thought, 
but nothing of the kind is suggested in the 
New Testament. If the New Testament teaches 
any bodily resurrection at all, it teaches that 
the entire body will rise, not desiccated nor 
eliminated. Pray tell us what is left of the 
body after these two doctors have it ready for 
the resurrection ? One desiccates nine-tenths, 
and then dismisses ever so much more as 
" effete matter," and then the other doctor leaves 
out the alimentary canal, beginning, of course, 
with the teeth, and including all the absorbent 
vessels. (And Dr. Whedon knows that, ages 
ago, this leaving out the digestive organs was 
repudiated, at least so far as the wicked were con- 
cerned, because teeth will be needed for gnash- 
ing in the outer darkness which awaits them.) 
Would not the lungs and heart go too? The 
liver certainly would. And then the generative 
parts must go also ! By this time there can not 
be left over one-twentieth part of the man to 
be raised. Is this small fraction of the body 
the dear old body which is to be so important 
that heaven can not be heaven without it? 
Would it not honor God much more to assume 
that he can and will raise all that appertains to 
our present personal existence, so that the body 
may not only be the identical body, but like 
the one which is supposed to be so precious ? 
Certainly this is the prevailing idea of those 
who are not learned enough to know that about 
nineteen-twentieths of what they have always 



ABSURDITIES OF THESE THEORIES. 195 

supposed to be body was only " foreign sub- 
stances" and unimportant appendages.* 

If not this, then let us accept the plain Scrip- 
tural notion that the immortal part is the man, 
and that when that is unclothed of its earthly 
house it will be at once clothed upon with its 
house which is from heaven ; that, dying, we 
are with the Lord, and being with him we are 
like him. 

Evidently, reasoning upon the method of the 
resurrection of this physical body is an up hill 
business. Science does not cast any light upon 
it ; and the unsophisticated one who believes that 
God looks down and watches all his dust till he 
shall bid it rise, falling back upon the strong- 
hold, of " the mystery of godliness" for explana- 
tion of the mode, is quite as correct as the pro- 
found doctors of medicine or divinity who pro- 
pose to simplify the operation by dispensing with 
nineteen-twentieths of the body. The old He- 
brew notion of an indestructible bone or muscle, 
which they called Luz, is certainly easier than all 
this, and the germ-theory is not any more absurd. 

The arguments which assume the necessity of 
such a physical resurrection in order to vindicate 



* This theory of these two doctors was ludicrously though unin- 
tentionally demolished, a few months ago, in New Albany, Indi- 
ana, in a set sermon intended to prove the resurrection of the 
body. The preacher, more remarkable for his talent and piety 
than the beauty of his person, having become wrought up by 
the inspiration of his theme, clinched his argument (?) by straighten- 
ing himself up and saying : " Yes, I want to come up, just six feet three 

in my stockings, gangling, long-armed, squint-eyed J W , 

just as you see me now." Brave man to thus accept the least de- 
sirable absurdity of the theory of a bodily resurrection ! Almost any 
other man would have submitted at least to the straightening of the 
eyes. We introduce the incident to show that this doctrine of a 
literal resurrection is yet preached sometimes in respectable pulpits, 
before intelligent congregations, in its most absurd aspects. 



196 MORAL ACCOUNTABILITY OF MATTER. 

God's justice and perfect our happiness, are 
almost too absurd to deserve notice, yet they 
are the most common. Some men are never so 
happy as when they are looking after other peo- 
ple's motives, and this habit grows on them un- 
til they learn to assign a motive to the Almighty 
for all that he does, whether it be an earthquake, 
or a Chicago fire, or the pestilence among the 
horses. His motive for raising this identical 
body, with all its parts and functions, has not 
escaped their criticism. 

Among the many reasons which must have 
been uppermost in the mind of the . Eternal, they 
assume, was the fact that man had sinned in this 
body, and if he had ever repented, he repented 
in this body, and this body having been a par- 
taker of the sins or the joys of this world, should 
also be a partaker of the rewards or punishments 
of another. What part matter, whether dead or 
alive, can take in transgression, so as to become 
morally responsible, we have no means of know- 
ing ; but on the supposition that matter can ■ sin, 
we see no reason why the dagger should not be 
hanged with the arm that wielded it. To such 
minds there can be no perfect joy in heaven until 
there is a re-union of the soul with the body, nor 
can the pains of hell be adequate until the body in 
which the soul sinned shall be turned into the 
lake of fire and brimstone, that soul and body 
may burn together eternally. 

Another reason which is often given is the 
love we have for this body, and the care we take 
of it, such that the soul cannot be fully happy 
without it. There is much more force in this 
than some imagine, for, indisputably, many per- 
sons have little joy except that which arises from 
feeding and adorning their bodies, and a heaven 



THE BODY AND ITS RAIMENT. 197 

of pure mental or spiritual occupation would be 
the direst hell that they could imagine. 

"I love this old body!" said the preacher in 
our hearing, when arguing in favor of a literal 
physical resurrection. We knew that, already, 
from the care he bestowed upon it ; and well he 
might love it, for it was large and well propor- 
tioned, and, in fact, handsome. Moreover, his 
digestion was good, and few were the pains that 
he suffered except those of the gout family. But 
we thought that the same argument would require 
the resurrection of his coat, for he loved that too, 
even more than his body, for he polluted this 
with tobacco, while that was kept as clean and 
stainless as the most assiduous attention to the 
brush could keep it. One-half the attention to 
the mind, the real man, might have made him the 
model preacher intellectually that he was physi- 
cally. 

And we thought, too, the coat and the body 
were much nearer kin than he had supposed. 
The same sheep which, by its curious machinery, 
had manufactured grass into wool for his outer 
adornment, had, at the same time, and out of the 
same grass, manufactured mutton for his inward 
comfort. The weaver and the tailor had taken 
the wool in hand and produced that glossy coat, 
while the butcher and the cook had rendered 
the mutton palatable, and thus long separated 
particles of the same sheep had come again into 
close relationship; but still both coat and body 
were of the earth, earthy, though they had reached 
their present relationship to the man through 
such different processes. Why, then, should not 
the coat be raised and immortalized with the 
body? 

Some men, like Dr. Wythe, above quoted, 



198 INCONSISTENCIES OF " CREDO." 

think that so much of a sheep as becomes " our 
own," by becoming mutton and entering into our 
bodies, becomes very sacred, while so much of 
the same sheep, manufactured out of the same 
grass, as goes into wool and becomes clothing, is 
only " foreign matter/' And they call that 
science ! * 



* There are some things in the book Credo which has just come 
to our notice, that so clearly dispose of the doctrine of a future bodily- 
resurrection that we take the liberty of further quoting from it, as at 
least indicating that the train of thought which is found in these pages 
has found its way into the ranks of eminent teachers, of whom Dr. 
Townsend is confessedly one. True, the doctor finds himself teth- 
ered to much of the figment which he seems heartily to discard. 
Thus. we find this incongruous sentence: " The ' resurrection unto 
life,' and the ' resurrection unto damnation,' would seem to be mean- 
ingless in the lips of Christ, were not the human soul, at some future 
time, to come into possession of a body, in which it shall live, and 
through which it shall act.'' Whereas such phrases are full of mean- 
ing, when we remember that Christ says, I am the resurrection. I 
am the life. That the dead are raised, not will be ; and that Paul 
says we have that body upon the dissolution of this. Where, dear 
Doctor, is there a single passage of Scripture which says that the soul, 
at some future time, shall come into possession of a body? It cannot 
be found in any man's Bible. 

Much more consistent with the teachings of inspiration are these 
sentences, referring to the doctrine of the fifteenth chapter of First 
Corinthians : " We are not able to see on what principle these pas- 
sages can be made to harmonize with the theory of a resurrection, 
which calls for the restoration of the old body, particle for particle, 
as it was constituted when it returned to dust." ..." What is 
the inevitable conclusion ? Is it that the same body which goes into 
the grave is to come out of it, and that the old material is to be the 
identical material of the new body? Is not the simple and natural 
meaning of the passage this — that the old body gives place to a new 
one?" . . . "Are we to enter these worn-out, diseased bodies 
again, and bear them through eternity?" ..." Nay, as we have 
borne the image of the earthy, we are also to bear the image of the 
heavenly." ..." This interpretation of the passages in ques- 
tion relieves us at once from the necessity of employing in our 
reconstruction the old particles of matter which have lost their iden- 
tity ; which have been organized and reorganized, again and again ; 
which have entered into other bodies, into the vegetable and animal 
kingdom, into the atmosphere and the clouds that float above us." 
. . . "We intuitively demand a body which shall be free from the 



DR. CURRY'S VIEWS. 199 

gross materials of the present." . . . We would change tenements, 
rather than be at the trouble and expense of moving out only to 
move back again." 

It is almost painful to see one who entertains such comforting and 
Scriptural views of the future life as the foregoing and the following, 
tethered to the loathsome corpse of medieval superstition, and appar- 
ently struggling to be free. No Romish dogma has less foundation in 
the Bible, or in common sense, or in the deductions which science 
makes from undoubted spiritual phenomena, than that called the inter- 
mediate estate — the assumed half-way place between earth and heaven. 
Romanists need it for their purgatorial purifications, but enlightened 
Christians should discard it at once and forever. But for an occa- 
sional ungracious allusion to it, one would suppose that our author 
had risen entirely above it, entering into the purer atmosphere of the 
teachings of Christ and his apostles. The following beautiful sen- 
tences belong to a higher plane than that to which Professor Towns- 
end seems to have attained, yet they are found in his " Credo " : 
" Is it not true that there is an instinctive and positive demand 
in every human nature, for a body to dwell in ? "Who can think of 
the future life with pleasure without thinking of it as organized? 
The idea of a purely spiritual existence unembodied, thus to last for- 
ever, is painful and repulsive. [Yes, thus to last one hour.] . . . 
The natural idea we have of a disembodied spirit is that of a wander- 
ing, restless ghost. [Yet, some people's notions leave our love^l ones 
to wander thus through interminable ages.] As naturally as we 
breathe we seize upon the idea of a home for and an embodiment of 
the soul — one that is perfect and under complete control. [That is 
just what Paul says we have, as soon as the earthly home is dis- 
solved. Just what John says we shall be, embodied personalities. 
Just as Jesus is, for we shall be like him. ] Such a condition during 
our future existence can alone satisfy our desires. Any other condition 
•would never have been dreamed of, but for enmity to the truth, and a 
false interpretation of the Scriptures. [The italics are ours, and we 
add, emphatically, Amen !] . . . Human nature, to be com- 
plete, must have some kind of organism. [Angels have organisms, 
and we are to be as they are.] . . . Upon high and strictly 
rational grounds, we may assert that a bodily organism in the 
future life is a positive necessity of our nature. It is a revela- 
tion, not from the Bible alone, but from every human soul. [How 
cruel, then, to teach that for thousands, and probably tens of thou- 
sands of years, the soul shall be a disembodied spirit, " a restless, 
wandering ghost?" One hour of such nakedness would be as death 
itself. Let us believe the Bible, and not the terrible Roman dogma 
of an intermediate state.] . . . Dreamy and shadowy phantoms 
find no place in the Scriptures. The organisms of the dead are as 
real as those of angels. Let us have done with spiritualistic and 
Anti-Christian notions which reduce the universe to gas, and our 
deceased friends to atmospheric phenomena. We are not to become 



200 " B UTLER'S ANALOG F." 

ghosts and nothings. . . . When we die we shall see friends 
and know them, as certainly before as after the resurrection. . . . 
When the eyes of mortals are closing in death, do they not frequently 
seem to open upon sweet and well-known faces? Do not dear and 
familiar names sometimes break from their closing lips ? The wel- 
come of friends long since dead is heard in the heavenly world before 
the farewells are hushed in this. There are moments when the 
physical organisms of this world are seen in company with the spirit- 
ual organisms of the other world, and where the blending voices of 
both worlds are audible." 

It is sad to see one basking in such pure and comforting Bible and 
experimental truths, and then to see him drawn back, evidently re- 
luctantly, by that relentless tether, to the chilling dogma of some- 
thing, he knows not what, but which, in deference to the creed from 
which he dare not break away, he calls the resurrection. He floun- 
ders, and apologizes for this in the following unsatisfactory manner; 
" But if this spiritual organism be so complete, why the need of new 
resurrection bodies ? What if we do not know ? God says we are to 
have them, and this is enough." [The very thing which God does 
not say. The very thing of which Christ sought to disabuse the minds 
of the Sadducees, if you mean bodies to be taken on, ages hence.] 

One would hardly suppose that, having so effectively disposed of 
the material body, sending it in his theology, where it is sent in phil- 
osophy "into the vegetable and animal kingdom, into the atmos- 
phere, and the clouds that float above us," we would ever find him 
poetizing . among the tombs. But that tether, that dreadful tether, 
brings him down at last from the pure atmosphere of the Bible truth, 
and we find him burning up the world with the usual ceremony, and 
providing for the disembodied ghosts a luxury which he thus des- 
cribes : " Would it not be a pleasant experience, as well as a dictate 
of philosophy, if in the graveyard of ourselves and friends, our spirits 
should at last meet to bid an eternal and ever-present welcome 
to each other, and a final farewell to the crumbling world and 
crumbling body?" [Why in a graveyard anymore than elsewhere, 
seeing the bodies, there have been dissipated "in the atmosphere and 
in the clouds ? "] 

To this we add the following from Dr. Curry,' of the Christian 
Advocate, New York, who will hardly be denominated an iconoclast 
or a heretic or an infidel : "We are free to say that some things that 
we have heard and read about raising to immortality the material 
body — the breaking up of graves and the upsetting of tombstones at 
the ' resurrection ' — may be questioned without incurring the guilt of 
heresy, and that the materialistic renderings of the language of 
our Lord and of St. Paul may, without offense, be re-examined. We 
certainly should feel free to doit." — Christian Advocate, Jan. 15, 1874. 

Bishop Butler's famous Analogy of Religion, which has remained 
unanswered for 1 50 years because it is unanswerable, and which is a 
text book in every theological school in England and America, is 
based upon the doctrine that the body is no part of the man. In his 



WHA T IS DBA TH ? 201 

By far the most plausible as well as the most 
common argument in favor of a bodily resurrec- 
tion is that which assumes that the resurrection is 
the bringing- up of something which had gone 
under — something which had gone down. Dr. 
Edwards states the argument thus: "The resur- 
rection is the resurging from death of that which 
died." Others ask, "What body is it that is 
sown?" and answer, "Clearly our bodies of flesh 
and blood," and add, "The soul does not die; it 
is the body that dies, and it is therefore the body 
which must be raised." 

This whole argument is baseless, because 
founded upon an unscriptural as well as an un- 
philosophical idea of death. The body no more 
dies in the article of death than the soul dies then. 
It no more dies after what is called death than 
it died before. What men call death is simply 



argument on the Future State, he says : " All presumption of 
death's being the destruction of living beings must go upon the sup- 
position that they are compounded. . . . Now upon supposition 
that the living agent that each man calls himself is a single being, it 
follows that our organized bodies are no more ourselves or part of 
ourselves than any other matter around us. . . . It is as easy to 
conceive that we may exist out of bodies as in them. . . . 
Things of this kind unavoidably teach us to distinguish between 
these living agents, ourselves, and large quantities of matter in which 
we are very nearly interested. . . . After all, the relation a 
person bears to these parts of his body amounts to but this, that the 
living agent and those parts of the body mutually affect each other. 
Our organs of sense and our limbs are certainly instruments 
which the living person, ourselves, makes use of to perceive and 
move with. There is not any probability that they are any' more, 
nor consequently that we have any other kind of relation to them 
than what we have to any other foreign matter, formed into instru- 
ments of perception or motion, suppose into a microscope or staff. 
. . . And we have no reason to think we stand in any other kind 
of relation to any thing which we find dissolved by death." 

Page after page of the Analogy is in this strain. It is the basis 
of the entire book. Whatever of value is found in the book is as de- 
pendent upon this assumption as are all the subsequent propositions 
of Euclid upon the propositions contained in his first book. 



202 SEPARA TION OF SO UL AND BOD Y. 

that event — that point of time — at which the vital 
forces cease to retain, in organized form, the 
earthy matter which composes the body. Every 
breath we exhale, every action of healthy vitality 
which throws off effete matter from any part of 
the body, is death as to that particle of matter 
which has thus fulfilled its. mission in that body, 
and has gone hence by vital action itself to 
become dust again, and to be taken up, in due 
time, in other organisms, vegetable or animal, to 
thus live and die eternally by the laws which God 
has given, if being organized is life, and being dis- 
organized is death ; yet it is only inert matter in 
all these changes. In many instances this process 
of disorganization goes on rapidly for months, or 
even years, until that frame — that form — that 
body which was once glorious in its symmetry 
and strength becomes a mere feeble, decrepit mass 
of loathsome putrescence, with not one element 
of loveliness ; and at last the vital spark ceases 
to preserve it any longer from absolute disinte- 
gration. Does that body die any more in this 
final escape of the vital force than when the other 
particles of it had died as to that body in escaping 
in advance, from a union with vitality? The 
body die, indeed! Solomon was wiser than ten 
thousand such philosophers when he said that in 
what men call death, " Dust returns to dust as it 
was, and the spirit returns to God who gave it." 
(Ec. xii., 7.) 

Death is nothing more, nothing less, than this. 
It is a separation of the soul — the real man — 
from the dust of the earth, which was at the 
moment of separation in organized form. The 
spirit — the real man — goes to God its Father ; the 
dust, to its kindred dust. Death is as predicable 
of the soul as of the body, for one separates from 



LIKE TO LIKE. 203 

the other, each to seek its nearest of kin. The 
man dies — that union of inert matter with the 
spirit, which in common language we call man, 
dies, — the union ceases and the organism ceases ; 
but neither the spirit nor the matter dies. 
Each exists afterwards in its appropriate sphere, 
though never to be reunited again in the same 
or a like organism. Dust to dust — the spirit 
with God. 



CHAPTER XVI 

The Probable Nature of our Future Life. 

WHETHER our immortality is attained by 
this process or that, both reason and 
revelation assure us that it will be purely spirit- 
ual and of eternal duration. But what may be an 
existence purely spiritual in its character, it 
is not probable that the utmost stretch of our 
imaginations ever conceived. Certainly, words 
cannot convey an idea of the properties of spirit, 
further than we have been made conversant 
with those properties in our own experiences. 
The language of earth refers only to things 
material and earthly, and is probably as inappro- 
priate to the things of the spirit-life as the words 
which describe the properties of matter, which 
are realized only by sight, are to the man who 
never saw. 

If in this world there are progressive devel- 
opments of spirit-life, each successive stage 
opening a new plane with its new emotions, 
what shall we say of the probable character of 
spirit-life in the other world, when at once, 
or in rapid succession, there shall burst upon 
the spirit the realities of a sphere now un- 
known to it ? That young mother, to-day for 
the first time looking upon the form of her 
first-born, is experiencing a soul-emotion to 
which she has hitherto been a stranger. Her 
love for that child is unlike, in character and 



CONCEPTIONS OF HE A FEN. 205 

degree, any love she has ever known before. 
It is a spirit-development, the springing into 
life of latent soul-capabilities, which may pos- 
sibly be only one of a thousand such instances 
of spirit-growth which the ever new realities 
of the spirit-land may inspire. If no words or 
signs could ever open that sealed fountain until 
it was opened by the object on which a mo- 
ther's love could rest, although she knew what 
was love for husband, and parents, and brothers, 
who need attempt to delineate the characteristics 
of the world of spirits by words applicable only 
to earth? 

No doubt very much of the confusion which 
exists in the minds of people on this subject is 
the result of attempts to apply literally the 
extravagant poetic conceptions of immortality 
which are found in the Bible. Speaking of 
heaven, John calls it a new Jerusalem, and de- 
scribes it as a walled city of no very extensive 
dimensions, but brilliant and costly in its ap- 
pointments ; yet certainly it would be too much 
of a prison house for spirits, if our conceptions 
of the capabilities of spirits are half-way cor- 
rect. Other poets, probably quite as capable of 
doing the subject justice, have invested Paradise 
with the beauties of spring in the rural districts ; 
making heaven an extensive plain, eternally 
bright, and perpetually brilliant with flowers, 
and abounding in choice fruits and cooling 
streams of pure water, not always omitting lit- 
eral wine. 

With all this, and much more like it, the 
heaven of not a few is to be pre-eminently a 
place of rest. They have dragged themselves, or 
have been driven, through a life of incessant toil, 
and nothing seems so heavenly as a place where 



206 THE WISH FATHERS THE THOUGHT. 

there is nothing to do. Rest from trouble, rest 
from care, rest from toil, constitute their beau 
ideal of bliss, so much so that if it be suggested 
that probably spirits are ever active, they shake 
their heads with disapprobation. 

A class of Christians, whose mental and 
moral make-up finds the perfection of earthly 
enjoyment in the excitement of a fervent type 
of religious exercises, think that the most 
desirable characteristics of the happy land will 
be its endless Sabbaths, and perpetual congre- 
gations of worshipers, where there will be 
loud singing and zealous shouting, not mar- 
red by the tones of any huge organ in the 
gallery. 

To the heart that has been often broken by 
the removal hence 'from the family circle of the 
objects of its love, the chief charm of heaven 
will be its family reunions, with a hope that, 
being no death there, there will be no more 
parting. 

Thus on, from the Indian, who thinks, 

" Admitted to that equal sky, 

His faithful dog will bear him company," 

through every grade of intellect and cultivation, 
we find diverse opinions of the probable details 
of the character and occupations of heaven, 
observing, as a general rule, that that becomes 
most prominent which is most longed for in 
this life. 

The country rustic seizes most readily upon 
John's gorgeous city, with its foundation of jas- 
per, and sardonyx, and sapphire, and gates of 
pearl, and its streets of gold. That is the per- 
fection of splendor, in his estimation, and he 
thinks that city life, amidst such surroundings, 
would be most desirable. 



WHA T IS SURE. 207 

On the other hand, the dweller in the city, 
whose vision is bounded by bleak walls and 
cheerless pavements, who never sees a green 
branch, or hears the notes of a happy bird, longs 
for a heaven of rural beauties and delights. 
He would never exchange Watts for John. Let 
his heaven be one of sweet fields beyond the 
swelling flood, all dressed in living green, where 
there are rocks, and hills, and brooks, and vales, 
with milk that is not diluted, and honey that is 
fresh from the comb. The little child, who was 
captivated by the splendor of a steamboat cabin, 
as contrasted with her own home, only played 
the grown up Christian, of average opinion and 
hopes, when she asked if heaven would be any 
prettier than that. 

Many of our songs contribute, no doubt, to 
very erroneous views of the abode of immortals. 
It is, indeed, no longer taken to be an under- 
ground cavern, more thanks to science than to the 
popular interpretation of Scripture, however ; but 
it is a "happy land, far, far, away." What right 
has any one to teach such a doctrine? Poets 
are unreliable theologians as a general thing. 
Heaven cannot be far away, whatever or wher- 
ever it may be. We know only this about it with 
certainty : There is no night there ; no sickness, 
no crying, no hunger or thirst, no death ; but the 
Redeemer and the redeemed are there, and the 
redeemed are like the Redeemer ; each a pure 
spirit, yet each retaining such a personal identity 
that it shall be readily recognizable by fellow 
immortals. 

There is a beauty in the conception that as 
the earth and other planets revolve around the 
sun as their center, so the sun, and other suns, 
the fixed stars, mav revolve around still another 



208 THE SUBSTANCE OF SPIRIT. 

center, and these larger centers still revolve 
around centers still larger, until at the inner 
center of ail material existence, is found the 
throne of God. This is not only beautiful, but 
it is probable, as to the construction of the mate- 
rial universe, and not improbable as to God 
himself, who, as spirit, is omnipresent, yet is 
represented to our conceptions as having a seat 
of power and authority. These frequent repre- 
sentations cannot be all poetry. At least, it is not 
possible for us, in the body, to form a better 
idea of him than is afforded by such language 
as the Bible uses. But all this does not make our 
heaven "far, far away," or intimate that it is not 
a place or locality ; it only makes it the more 
heavenly by conceiving that it is as large as the 
universe. 

The chief difficulty in comprehending heaven 
grows out of our ignorance of the essence of 
spirit. After all, what is spirit? Man was creat- 
ed pure spirit, and as such, no doubt, had a sepa- 
rate existence before he entered the body which 
was formed for him of the dust of the ground. 
Is it unreasonable, therefore, to suppose that he 
shall have such an existence after leaving the 
body? 

Perhaps the nearest approach that we can 
ever make to the substance of spirit is found in 
the capabilities of mind, which is spirit encased 
in an earthly body, the real immortal man itself. 
But mind is hardly local. It is here now, giv- 
ing attention to weighing or measuring some 
material substance. In a moment it is yonder, 
among some ancient ruins, or surveying some 
modern enterprise. Now it goes away in quest 
of that great center where God is, and then 
returns to the sober duties of every-day life. 



THE NEARNESS OF HEA FEN. 209 

If mind, the man, encumbered by a fleshy body, 
can thus approximate omnipresence, what may 
we not attribute to the spirit-man when un- 
clothed of this earthly house? 

There is nothing in the Bible-account of the 
spirit-land that necessarily fixes it at a great 
distance from earth. When Saul called for Sam- 
uel he was not far away; and there are not 
wanting instances, well authenticated, of such 
spirit communings as indicate that if the de- 
parted do not hover around us as angels do, 
nay, become in some sense the guardian angels 
of those who are to become heirs of salvation, 
they may visit the earth without going beyond 
the bounds of their heavenly home.* 

Dr. Whedon, one of the ripest scholars of the 

* " There are seasons when the soul seems to recognize the pres- 
ence of the departed, and to hold communion with them. They are 
like angelic visitants. We meet them in our lonely walks, in our deep 
and solemn meditations and in our closet communions. We meet 
them when the lengthening shadows hallow the even-tide. Mysteri- 
ous and solemn is their communion. We meet them where sorrows 
encompass us round about, and hallowed is the influence their pres- 
ence imparts. Who shall say that at such times there is not a real 
communion between the living and the dead ? Who shall say that 
there is not then a real presence of the dead with the living ? . . . 
There is a pernicious view in the religious world, by which the dead 
are disassociated from the living. It was the impression of Mr. 
Wesley, that the strong impressions on the mind of Swedenborg, of 
the presence of deceased friends at particular moments, was produced 
by their actual but invisible presence. Thousands of Christians have 
had, at times, as clear and overpowering a consciousness of the 
spiritual presence of departed friends as of their own self-being. 

There is one other fact bearing on this subject which we cannot 
now forbear. It is the affecting recognition of the presence of the 
dead in Christ, which is sometimes realized by the dying saint. 
Parents have recognized departed children as present to welcome 
them, just at the moment of their own departure. So have children 
recognized the presence of a sainted father or mother. Also brothers 
and sisters have thus seemed to meet each other on the dividing line 
between this world and the next." — Bishop Clark. Man All Immortal, 
page 208, 209. 



210 DR. WHEDON'S THEORY. 

day, as well as one of the most profound meta- 
physicians, but withal a great stickler for a literal 
future resurrection (in a modified form, as wc 
have seen), thus explains away the material por- 
tions of the body after it has been raised. 

" While the material particles of the body 
are unchanged, the organism passes through a 
reorganizing and glorifying change. The same 
in material, it is new in arrangements, prop- 
erties, and capabilities. It will be a spiritual 
body, and that body will be angel-like. By the 
body's becoming a spiritual body, we understand 
that it will become subtilized, so adjusted to the 
pure spirit, and so subjected in every part and 
particle to the volition and power of the spirit, 
that, while the spirit becomes, so to speak, more 
substantiated, the personal unit of the two na- 
tures possesses all the capabilities that our 
thoughts usually attribute to the pure spirit." 

Very well ; the body becomes pure spirit 
after all, only that in some way, "so to speak," 
it slightly substantiates that spirit, yet it is pure 
spirit in its attributes. One can hardly refrain 
from asking, why then all this pother about a 
resurrection of matter, which is only an insig- 
nificant part of the body after all, according to 
Dr. Whedon's theory, if in the end it becomes 
pure spirit? Is it because God can not furnish 
us a spiritual body without having a material 
body from which to make the spiritual? But 
since the immortal being, rebuilt by reuniting 
the long-separated soul and body, and by de- 
priving the body of all its peculiar properties, 
except that it may yet " substantiate " the soul, 
has all the capabilities of pure spirit, there is 
not so much difference between materialists and 
spiritualists, except in the delay which the 



THE SPIRITUAL BODY, 211 

theory of the former causes. Whether this be 
a coming of Mahomet to the mountain, or the 
mountain to Mahomet, matters not. 

There is, however, something so spiritual in 
the attributes of this spiritual body, as given by 
the Doctor, although, "so to speak, somewhat 
substantiated," that we adopt it as expressing 
views which are probably correct. " By volition 
it passes, with lightning rapidity, through name- 
less distances. It clairvoyantly sees, at volition, 
through a finite immensity." 

That which follows is, if anything, better still, 
only we would attribute it to pure spirit, whether 
created in the image of God, as Adam was, and 
as man will be when divested of his form, or 
manufactured out of pre-existent matter, as Dr. 
Whedon supposes the spiritual body will be. It 
is entirely consistent with spirit demonstrations 
as recorded in the Bible, and no less authentic 
instances in more modern times: 

" By volition it transforms itself into any 
shape, and invests itself with a countless variety 
of properties and phenomenal presentations. It 
can become as the dark rolling cloud, the flash- 
ing lightning, the solid rock. And yet it will 
have a normal figure and face, which will at once 
be the true expression of its essential nature, and 
will reveal to the intuition of fellow-celestials 
the particular personality, and perhaps the entire 
past history of the individual. When asked, Will 
the glorified bodies have teeth? we reply, If 
they please ; and eat with them too, as the angels 
did who visited Abraham. If asked, Will they 
have hair? we reply, Yes, if they please, and 
shining raiment too, as the two angels did 
before the apostles at the ascension. Nothing 
is more clear, we think, than that varying phe- 



212 THE FUTURE MAN, PURE SPIRIT. 

nomenal form and properties are more or less 
at the command both of the pure spirit and the 
union of spirit with spiritual body."* 

Of these sentiments, so generally both philo- 
sophically and Scripturally correct, we add only 
that they seem to be the stragglings of an inde- 
pendent thinker to rise above the logical con- 
clusions of his false premises and the errors and 
prejudices of early education. Both reason and 
revelation teach that the future man will be 
pure spirit, "as the angels of God in heaven." 
So says Dr. Whedon ; yet, as though that were 
too much to attribute to the just made perfect, 
to man all immortal, he qualifies his otherwise 
happy conception by saying "the spirit becomes, 
so to speak, more substantiated." 

It may be difficult to comprehend how man, 
whom we know now only in an earthly body, 
can exist pure* spirit, " as the angels of God in 
heaven ; " yet that is what Christ says of him, 
and we prefer such authority to any other. 

Give us, then, this sublime conception of the 
perpetual continuance of life, terminating in a 
life which shall be "as the angels of God in 
heaven," without any hint that there must be 
some modification of so glorious an existence 



* These attributes of spirit give great plausibility to the theory 
of the " appearances'' of the Saviour after his resurrection, given in 
the chapter on the resurrection of Christ, and most satisfactorily 
account for the flesh and bones which he announced that he had. 
The Bible is full of facts which authorize the views here so ably set 
forth, and so, also, do well authenticated instances of spirit manifes- 
tations of a later day, whether the immediate agent were called a 
witch or a medium. It is no longer considered a mark of profound 
wisdom to dismiss cases of clairvoyance or spiritual manifestations 
with a sneer, as was once the method ; and, although there is a world 
of fraud and imposture in what is called modern spiritualism, the 
man writes himself a dunce who assumes to treat it all as beneath 
his notice, or pronounce it all a delusion and imposition. 



FUTURE RECOGNITION. 213 

by a union, at some future time, with something 
of an earthly, material nature, which will there- 
atter make us more like earth. Our departed 
friends are certainly pure spirits now, and they 
are certainly in heaven, even by the concessions 
of those who believe in literal material resurrec- 
tion. (See extract from Bishop Clark, elsewhere.) 
They are with Christ, and they are like Christ. 
They are now, as Christ is. Well might David 
say: "I shall be satisfied when I awake with 
thy likeness." Who can ask anything more ? 
And why should good men labor to teach that 
the heavenly life shall ever be anything less ? 

We close this chapter with a few sugges- 
tions which some may consider speculative. 
They may be true or false, without affecting 
the general doctrine of the book. 

Shall we recognize friends in the spirit life ? 
Certainly. Why not? Being "the children of 
the resurrection,", and " as the angels of God in 
heaven," the bonds which shall unite us may not 
be so selfish and exclusive as are the ties of 
kindred and the bonds of friendships here, but 
there will be, no doubt, a renewal and a recog- 
nition of the loves and friendships of this life 
in the life beyond. There are too many in- 
stances of spirit communings, not to speak of 
spirit manifestations, here, to doubt the interest 
of the departed in those left behind, and, of 
course, in those of like relationship in the land 
of spirits. That vague notion which too many 
entertain of spirits, that they are clouds or at- 
mosphere or undefined shapes, has no counte- 
nance in the Bible or in common sense or in 
experience. The spirit form, the spirit body, 
will be well defined, and will certainly be recog- 
nizable in the heavenly home, as it often is by 



214 CHANGES OF CONDITION. 

clairvoyance here, and by the dying, while they 
may yet communicate with those around. 

Will children remain children in the spirit-life? 
We cannot tell, but we hope they will. There 
is a world of beauty in the language of Christ: 
" Of such is the kingdom of heaven." There is 
an instinctive love for childhood which never 
dies in the pure and the good, and which is not 
dependent upon any relationship to the child 
itself. The cynic who is not moved by the love- 
liness of childhood is a monomaniac, and by that 
much, at least, unfitted for good society, wheth- 
er that deplorable state has been reached by 
vice, or crime, or selfishness. If the presence of 
children is so desirable in the social circle, even 
in the steamboat, or rail-car, or stage-coach, who 
does not hope that children will remain children 
in the land of spirits? Let them increase in 
knowledge eternally, but let their " spiritual 
body," their "mansion," their " house not made 
with hands," forever remain infantile, as we 
knew them in the earth-life. 

Will idiots and imbeciles remain feeble- 
minded in heaven ? We suppose not. Science 
has often demonstrated that, in many- cases, 
idiocy is the result of physical malformation. 
Why may not all cases of mental weakness be, 
though it be congenital and possibly hereditary ? 
The intellectual giants of earth may not tower 
above others in the land of spirits. Certainly 
an intellect of any type which has been devoted 
here to selfish and wicked purposes will not 
share in the bliss which we are taught by rea- 
son and revelation to expect for those who seek 
to do the will of God on earth. 

Men often speak derisively of those whom 
they choose to regard as not very intellectual, 



INTELLECT LS NOT SPLRITUALITY. 215 

and say " they know just enough to be relig- 
ious." Perhaps among the greatest surprises 
which await us in the land of immortals will 
be one not greatly unlike that experienced by the 
rich man of whom Christ speaks. He had been 
a sharp trader and a success in life, as men 
measure success. He was probably benevolent 
and kind, else Lazarus would not have called 
upon him habitually for alms. Yet in all his life 
he had done nothing which could be available 
in securing happiness in the life beyond, while 
Lazarus, contemned as a beggar by the busy, 
happy, healthy crowd, had been cultivating that 
heavenly-mindedness which eminently fitted him 
for the society of the good in that spirit-land. 
Thus many who have contemned the religious 
obscurity of others as contrasted with their own 
mental or social position, may be surprised to 
find that, after all, these were wiser in life than 
those who had despised them. Hence it is not 
improbable that those whom we pity, and de- 
nominate imbeciles, may at once take higher 
rank in the land of immortals than some who 
have occupied the highest social and intellectual 
positions. It was for misusing his one talent, 
not because he had but one, that the unfaithful 
servant was condemned — it was for improving 
what they had, not because they had two, or 
five, or ten talents, that the faithful stewards 
were rewarded. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

The Condition of the Wicked. 

IN the preceding chapters we have spoken of 
the mode of human immortality in general, 
referring for illustration chiefly to the condition 
of the righteous. It must not be inferred 
from this that we would teach that either the 
Bible or reason warrants the assumption, that 
in the life to come there will be no difference 
between those who served God on earth and 
those who served him not. On the contrary, 
both reason and revelation teach that there will 
be a vast and changeless difference. 

While, therefore, the sacred writers seem to 
have struggled to find modes of speech and 
illustrations from the most joyous and delightful 
things of life to impress us with the desirable- 
ness of the life beyond, for those who, by patient 
continuance in well doing, seek for glory, it has 
equally had recourse to the most terrible things 
by which to convey an idea of the misery of 
those who reject the Saviour, and remain dis^ 
obedient to the commands of God. 

Of the wicked it is said, They shall go away 
into everlasting punishment. Their anguish is 
described as the burning of a fire that is not 
quenched, as the gnawings of a worm that 
never dies, as abiding in outer darkness, where 
there are weeping and wailing and the gnashing 
of teeth, and, more fearful than all, as being 



EARL Y THEORIES OF HELL. 217 

punished with everlasting destruction from the 
presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his 
power. It can, therefore, be no matter of tri- 
fling import to die under condemnation. 

In a ruder and more sensuous age, and even 
yet among those who are incapable of appre- 
ciating the greater pains of mental agony, these 
terrible figures of speech were received as veri- 
table realities, and in imagination the infernal 
regions of Pluto were accepted as the gospel 
abodes of the lost, with a personal devil, and le- 
gions of fiends and furies, and literal fire and end- 
less smoke. Thitherward the souls of the wicked 
were sent at death, and, after the resurrection 
and judgment, soul and body were to be locked 
forever in a vast prison, burning eternally with 
fire and brimstone. 

The Bible gives no authority for such a dis- 
position of the wicked. Its fearful descriptions 
of the anguish of those who have been dis- 
obedient, when properly interpreted by the Bible 
itself, are even more dreadful than any physical 
sufferings, but they do not authorize the hell of 
the middle ages, or of the less cultivated and 
more brutal of this age. 

Neither are the wicked to be annihilated. 
The immortal man is still in the image of God, 
though fallen ; and, though under condemnation 
for sin, and unfitted for the society of the good, 
he lives, simple spirit, after having laid aside his 
house of clay at the close of his earthly pro- 
bation. 

There is nothing inconsistent with analogy 
or the Bible in supposing that, so far as locality 
is concerned, the good and the bad live together 
hereafter as here. There are good angels and 
bad angels spoken of in the Bible, yet they are 



218 THE LITERAL GREAT GULF. 

not separated by distance, wide and impassable 
as the moral gulf may be between them. 

The parables which speak of separating the 
tares from the wheat and the sheep from the 
goats can not be made to do service in proving 
distinct and distant places of abode for the good 
and the bad, unless we put the parables " on 
all fours," and prove also a literal throne, with 
a literal king upon it, always facing towards the 
same point of heaven's compass, with the right 
hand always turned towards the righteous and 
the left hand always towards the wicked. To 
our mind such expressions as " come, ye blessed," 
"depart, ye cursed," have no reference to local- 
ity. Those who so interpret them may do so 
without doing any violence to the -lesson to be 
enforced by Christ, while we see in them even 
a more terrible retribution than such a material 
separation implies. Such a literalizing of the 
language of Christ will require a belief that the 
righteous are to sit for ever, for they are to "sit 
down with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the 
kingdom." 

In the account which Christ gives of the rich 
man and Lazarus, the two were within seeing 
and hearing distance. The great gulf between 
them was the unalterableness of their moral 
characters ; that of Lazarus being a passport to 
fellowship with the good, but that of the rich 
man keeping him a great way off. One was 
comforted in realizing the fruition of his faith 
in the midst of sufferings, while the other was 
tormented in being not only deprived of his 
earthly joys, but in having no fellowship with 
the pure and holy of the land of spirits. 

Even if the theory of some be true, that from 
the beginning of the life of immortality all shall 



MORAL UNLIKENESS. 219 

tend upward in moral and intellectual character, 
the good and the bad alike, there will yet be 
an impassable gulf between them. The want of 
moral fitness for the society of Abraham was a 
gulf which could never be crossed by the de- 
parted rich man. In this life the wicked usually 
wax worse and worse, deceiving and being de- 
ceived, until their last moments ; while the path 
of the just grows brighter and brighter. If 
there is anything in the article of death or in 
the after-life which may check the momentum 
of earthly habits in either direction, it has never 
been revealed by observation or by revelation. 
But assuming that it may be, and that from the 
hour the man leaves the body in which he has 
never sought to please God or love him, he 
begins to lead a better life, yet he must see 
those who were wiser and better during their 
probation forever nearer to God than he himself 
can be. This gulf is impassable. 

We can hardly conceive of a more marked 
difference of character than that of Samuel and 
that of Saul ; yet, when Samuel foretold the 
death of Saul and his sons, it was by announcing 
that to-morrow they would be with him. If 
heaven were a separate place, far removed from 
the locality- of hell, this would be impossible. 
Samuel and Saul were together in the land of 
immortals, yet they were as unlike in moral 
character and in personal happiness as they had 
been on earth. The gulf which separated them 
was no wider now than then, and they were no 
more companions in the spirit T land than they 
had been on earth. The wretchedness of Saul 
was not alleviated by the death of his body, for 
his anguish was soul-anguish. 

Why may not the good and the bad live 



220 THE HELL OF REMORSE. 

together in the spirit-land as they do here, and 
as good and bad angels do there ? The wicked 
shall there have no power to trouble, and, 
doubtless, the distinction will be more marked, 
more perceptible, than here. No robe of mock 
righteousness will shield the hypocrite, and no 
garment of outward morality will conceal the 
inward hatred of the heart, with its fountains 
of corruption ever flowing. This of itself will 
be an undying torment, a fire which nothing 
can quench. 

What burning could be so* terrible as a con- 
scious existence among the pure and the holy, 
yet morally so far from them that approach 
and association were impossible ? Everlasting 
destruction from the presence or favor of the 
Lord, and from the glory of his power, is the 
most terrible picture of the reward of the wicked. 
The recollection of opportunities slighted, and 
of misspent time, will be a perpetual remorse, 
more painful to the immortal man than the 
gnawings of any worm upon the body; and 
what darkness could be 'so unendurable as to be 
shut out from the favor and glory of the Lord ? 
Those who insist on a literal place of burnings 
little appreciate the sinfulness of sin, and under- 
rate the extent of the punishment of those who, 
knowing their duty during their probationary 
period, did it not. 

The flames which tormented the rich man in 
hell were not from without, but from within. 
He was not in a literal lake of fire and brim- 
stone, but fire more consuming by far was within 
him. Like the rich fool, who had fed his soul 
on much goods, by ministering only to the lusts 
of the flesh and the desires of the eye, whose 
god was his belly, and who minded only earthly 



ETERNAL PUNISHMENT, 221 

things, he now found that the real man, dis- 
possessed of these sources of happiness, had 
nothing on which the spirit could subsist. The 
distinctions which wealth had given were all 
gone, and in that land where moral character 
alone was the measure of worth, he saw the 
man whom he had contemned as a beggar now 
in the society of Abraham and the good of all 
previous ages, while his only associates were 
such as had been vile, and low, and sensual on 
earth like himself though clothed in purple and 
fine linen, still vile, and low, and sensual in the 
land of immortality. Could any flames from 
without so torment ? Could any worm within 
a material body so gnaw as that consciousness 
of a misspent life would forever disturb a soul, 
lost? How significant the language of Christ: 
" What will it profit a man if he gain the whole 
world and lose his own soul? or what would a 
man give in exchange for his soul ? " 

Living in sight of the throne, yet not daring 
to approach it ; feeling the power of the Lord, 
but partaking of none of the glory of that 
power; seeing Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, 
and thousands of personal acquaintances, whose 
humble lives of devotion to God were the butt 
of ridicule on earth, now clothed in the right- 
eousness of faith, and living with the Lord, and 
being like him, while they, unclothed of their 
earthly treasure, have their moral rottenness 
all exposed — what torment! What an endless 
burning ! 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

A few Words about Inspiration, Hell, Heaven, General 
Resurrection and the Day of Judgment. 

LET it not be said that in this book we deny 
the inspiration of the Scriptures. Nothing 
could be further from the truth. If the reader 
infers from the views we have taken that this is 
so, let him state that such is his inference, not that 
it is our declaration. If he constructs a syllo- 
gism and reaches this conclusion, let him state 
it as a conclusion, not as a truth. His premises 
may be very faulty, and his conclusions may like- 
wise be faulty ; but above all let him be charita- 
ble, for the papist proves the same thing of him 
by the same process ; feet- washing Baptists prove 
the same thing in the same way, and so on 
through the whole line of theological differences 
of opinion. It is the cheapest argument in the 
world, and, therefore, the most readily resorted 
to by the feeble-minded. No others use it, 
except where the thing is openly avowed. In 
our views of inspiration we are in good company. 
That standard theological work of this genera- 
tion, McClintock and Strong's Encyclopedia, says: 
" Plenary inspiration is a phrase nowhere war- 
ranted by the Scriptures as predicated of 
themselves." 

Let no one say that we deny that there is a 
hell. We do nothing of the kind. We believe 
and teach, as the Bible does, that there is a hell, 



BELIEF IN HELL. 223 

whose burnings are eternal, but we do not believe 
that it is located in Gehenna, in the valley of the 
Sons of Hinnom ; neither do we believe or teach 
that there is, or ever was, or ever will be, any 

Eart of the universe of God which is a lake of 
re and brimstone, from which the smoke of tor- 
ment ascends forever and ever. If the reader 
infers from this that we believe there is no -hell, 
let him be honest and truthful, for whoso loveth 
and maketh a lie — whoso misrepresents his 
brother — shall have his portion in the lake of fire 
and brimstone, whatever that is ; and we are free 
to confess that theological disputants are not 
always candid in stating the views of others — let 
him be truthful and say that he infers from our 
views that we teach that there is no hell, and 
not say that we teach anything of the kind. 

Let no one say that we teach that there is no 
such place as Heaven because we do not believe 
that some special portion of God's creation is wall- 
ed in with jasper, garnished with all manner of 
precious stones, and built within with pure gold, 
like unto glass, as the prison-house of the immor- 
tal, God-like man. The heaven of the Bible and 
of reason is so much grander than that, that we 
teach of a better country. But if any one infers 
that heaven is not a place if it is not a large 
city of indescribable splendor such as John saw, 
let him frankly state the case as his inference, not 
as our teaching. If he constructs a syllogism 
from his own fancy, and reaches this conclusion 
let him be honest — honesty is the best policy, 
even in theology — and let him say that such is 
his conclusion from his premises, not the teach- 
ings of this book. 

Let no one say that we deny the resurrection 
of the dead. We do nothing of the kind. If 



224 THE GENERAL RESURRECTION. 

the New Testament does not teach the resurrec- 
tion of the dead, it teaches nothing. If any one 
infers, from the fact that we deny the resurrection 
of the material body, that, therefore, we deny 
the resurrection of the dead, let him state this as 
his inference, not as our teaching. If he cannot 
conceive how there can be an immortality with- 
out a body made of clay, let him say so ; but let 
him not say that we teach no resurrection. The 
book is pre-eminently a book teaching the resur- 
rection of the dead after the pattern shown to 
the disciples on the Mount of Transfiguration, 
and after the teachings of Christ, though not 
after the traditions of men. 

Let no one say that we deny the doctrine of 
a general judgment, because we believe that the 
departed man goes at once to his place with an 
unchangeable character, and that there will be 
no such an event as a " resurrection morning " 
and a " judgment day," such as is often taught 
from the pulpits of the land. All of the moral 
sanctions of the Bible, particularly of the New 
Testament, find their authority in the great re- 
vealed truth which announces that " God hath 
appointed a day in which he will judge the world 
in righteousness by that man whom he hath or- 
dained." Like all other essential Bible truths 
this is abundantly corroborated by the judg- 
ment and reason of man, and even if we found 
much less authority for it in the Bible we 
should be slow to shake public confidence in it, 
seeing that without such a doctrine the re- 
straints against vice would be so enfeebled as to 
return Christendom to a worse than savage law- 
lessness. 

We trust that we may be pardoned for de- 
voting here a few paragraphs to this subject in 



THE JUDGMENT DA Y. 225 

elucidation of the Bible teachings, as we read 
and understand the Bible. 

Peter says, (2 Pet., iii., 7) : " The heavens and 
the earth, which are now, are kept in store, re- 
served unto fire against the day of judgment." 
This is, we believe, the most direct passage from 
which the idea of a " day of judgment" is de- 
ducible. We have shown in our chapter on the 
second coming of Christ that this referred to 
some event which the Christians of that time 
were " looking for and hasting unto." What- 
ever it was must have been nigh to them, and 
so it was, and so it came in less than six years 
from the time of the writing. 

Perhaps we may find some clue to the utter 
destructiveness of this fire which shall dissolve 
the heavens, and melt the elements (v. 12), by 
referring to the fact that Peter also says : " The 
heavens that were of old, and the earth, and the 
world that then was, perished" by being over- 
flowed with water, (Greek, apolluo — were destroy- 
ed). Peter means nothing more than this, in 
reference to the on-coming calamity. How ut- 
terly the world perished, or was destroyed by the 
flood, we well know. We do not see how any 
man can claim Peter for authority for any other 
kind of a destruction of the present heaven and 
earth than the destruction caused by that flood, 
in the light of Peter's own explanation by his 
reference to the local flood which is described 
by Moses. Let him who can believe such, so 
believe ; we cannot. It is a method of interpre- 
tation at war with every law of exegesis. 

But, says the objector, does not Peter look for 
"new heavens and a new earth"? Most cer- 
tainly, " according to His promise." That we 
may know what this is, let us look at the " prom- 



226 DESTRUCTION OF THE EARTH. 

ise." " Behold I create new heavens and a new 
earth," (Is. lxv., 17). This is the promise. Then 
what follows? Men shall build houses, sinners 
shall live to be a hundred years old, the elect 
shall live to be as old as a tree, the lion shall eat 
straw like the bullock, and the serpent shall feed 
on dust, and much more of that kind. Is this 
anything like the heaven which men usually 
locate on the new earth which is to come out 
of the fire after the dissolution and meltings of 
the judgment day? If the things which belong to 
that new heaven are figurative, why should the 
burning, and melting, and dissolution all be lit- 
eral? If the elect are to die even when they 
reach the age of a tree, there will be death in the 
new heavens and the new earth ; and even if sin- 
ners are to be accused at the age of a hundred 
years, then there are to be sinners there. We 
most affectionately beg our readers to " re-exam- 
ine and re-state " their views on this subject. It 
will bear further investigation. 

But Peter says : " The day of the Lord will 
come, etc." We have referred to this in another 
chapter, and add in this connection only this: 
Isaiah (xiii., 13) calls the day of the destruction of 
Babylon the "day of the Lord," "the day of his 
fierce anger," which shall shake the heavens and 
the earth. A similar hyperbole is found in Isaiah 
24th, in which " the earth is utterly broken down 
and clean dissolved." (v. xix.) Yet we never 
heard this chapter quoted as authority for a day 
of judgment or the burning up of the world. 

Why not accept the plain, simple, and reason- 
able teachings of Christ on this subject? Why 
should they be distorted to prove so absurd ancl 
unscriptural a proposition as that which is con- 
tained in the notion of a "general judgment" 



THE NE W EAR TH. 227 

after a " general resurrection/' in which all who 
shall have lived on earth are to be brought before 
a literal throne, with literal books to be opened, 
and literal angels to act as bailiffs, and a literal 
traversing of every act and every thought of lives 
which had ended millions of years before, most 
of them in utter obscurity ? And all this is to be 
done in one day — literally within one twenty-four 
hours; and indeed in only a very small part of 
that day, for the dead in Christ have to be raised 
first, then those who are alive have to be changed, 
and then the judgment, all on the same day. To 
extend the time beyond one literal day of twenty- 
fou 1 * hours is to abandon this entire theory of the 
resurrection and the judgment. If it may lap 
over into another day it may into two days, into 
ten days, into ten years, into thousands, into mil- 
lions of years, and this would destroy the whole 
theory and bring it in harmony with the doc- 
trine of Christ on this subject — the doctrine of 
reason and experience. 

We cannot speak certainly, but we do not 
believe that any man, of any age, in any time, 
of any degree of cultivation, was ever satisfied 
with his own reasonings and the reasonings of 
the books on this subject which ended in the 
calling of the happy from heaven and the damned 
from hell- for a few hours that they might rein- 
habit their old bodies, and, a second time, hear 
their doom and depart to the right or left accord- 
ing to their character. To say that it must be 
postponed until the Almighty finds out how much 
evil a bad man has done, following the stream 
of his influences to the end, and how much good 
an upright man has done, following the stream 
of good influences in the same way to its end, 
sounded to us like blasphemy when we heard 



228 LITERAL INTERPRETATION TESTED. 

it with emphasis in childhood — it sounds no better 
now. We do not say that this is blasphemy in 
the mouths of those who use it, but it would 
be in our mouth. " Known unto God are all his 
works from the beginning of the world." We 
have referred to the teachings of Christ on this 
subject. Any word of Christ, half so directly 
teaching a resurrection of the body, would be 
seized upon as unanswerable; why is not this: 
"Now is the judgment of this world"? (John ii., 
31.) And again: " The Father judgeth no man, 
•but hath committed all judgment to the Son," 
(John v. 22), and " Hath given him authority to 
execute judgment." (v. 27.) Whatever is meant 
by this judgment is now taking place. So man- 
ifestly does this refer to a final judgment that 
Dr..Whedon in his notes says: "Be it specially 
noted that during this passage the entire future 
of death and resurrection is held as conceptually 
present." We would substitute actually for con- 
ceptually, and heartily agree with the commenta- 
tor. On John v., 27, he says: "We have in the 
present passage a brief but most explicit descrip- 
tion of the simultaneous resurrection and uni- 
versal judgment of mankind." This, too, we 
most cordially endorse, except that by the con- 
text the Doctor refers it to the far-off future res- 
urrection of the body. We assume and we think 
we have shown that the resurrection — the anas- 
tasis — follows immediately upon death, and the 
judgment is simultaneous therewith, as every 
Christian but soul-sleepers practically admits, in 
conceding that the soul goes at once to a place 
of conscious joy or misery, which it could not 
do intelligently, except that the judge had exer- 
cised judgment in the case, for from the decision 
of that hour there is no appeal. The " final judg- 



CHRIST, JOHN, AND PETER. 229 

ment," as taught in some pulpits, is not for a 
re-hearing of the case, but only for an intensifying 
of a judgment already passed. We have already 
shown that by authority of Peter " The great and 
terrible day of the Lord, spoken of by Joel," 
(Acts ii., 17,) referred to the times in which Peter 
lived, a part of which was fulfilled in the day of 
Pentecost, and a part in the terrible visitation 
so graphically predicted by Peter in his second 
epistle, third chapter. 

There are, then, a general resurrection and a 
general judgment. The dead live again, and the 
good are rewarded and the bad are punished ; but 
instead of limiting all this to the few hours which 
are usually supposed to embrace them, or instead 
of beginning them at some far-off future, and 
extending them indefinitely or eternally thence 
forward (for if extended beyond the twenty-four 
hours they may be extended eternally — if the 
word day is not limited to twenty-four hours of 
our time, and means only a period, it may as well 
have begun with Adam as to begin millions of 
years hence and extend thence forw r ard indefi- 
nitely), we begin them where Christ began 
them. Abraham lived with God, and had been 
judged; Lazarus lived with Abraham, and had 
been judged ; the rich man was in torment, hav- 
ing been judged. "Now is the judgment of this 
world'' says Christ, and we believe his words in 
preference to any creed made by man. 



CHAPTER XIX. 
Concluding Remarks. 

WE conclude with the chapter which proba- 
bly some would have placed in the begin- 
ning. We have often been met, during the years, 
that we have been preaching the doctrine of the 
resurrection of the dead and its kindred topics 
as herein set forth, by appeals not to disturb the 
settled faith of the people ; as though it were al- 
most a sin to jostle men out of the ruts of 
thought and opinion along which they and their 
fathers had so long driven unmolested. In one 
sense it is mischievous. It is such an affliction 
for some men to think, that it is almost cruel to 
disturb their drowsiness, and this is not applica- 
ble to the pew only, for some men who occupy 
the pulpit find it so much easier to accept Mil- 
ton, and Pollock, and Young, as their teachers, 
than to inquire in the Bible whether these things 
are so, that they preach from year to year with- 
out any farther investigation than the "standard 
authors" afford. The suggestion partakes of in- 
sufferable cowardice. 

On the subject discussed in these pages, we 
have found that many pastors not only enter- 
tain doubts on the subject of a bodily resur- 
rection at the so-called end of the world, but 
they entertain decided convictions that the doc- 
trine is not -authorized by the Bible and is op- 
posed by well established philosophy ; yet, for 
prudential reasons, they continue to preach the 



PULPIT AND PEW. 231 

dogma according to the creed, or they say noth- 
ing on the subject at all, because it is so much 
easier to jog along, receiving their stipend from 
a satisfied nock than it is to arouse thought on 
any. subject. Neither can it be denied that the 
ecclesiastical lash has had something to do in 
this enforced silence. Until within a short time 
every ecclesiastical organization built its iron 
bedstead which was to be the exact measure of 
fraternity. Happily, however, that day is past 
forever in the Christian Church, and nothing 
but a denial of the most fundamental articles of 
faith is any longer a bar to Christian fellowship.* 

That the pulpit has lost much of its power 
over the pew is undeniable. To a certain ex- 
tent this is legitimate and desirable. The peri- 
patetic school master was once an oracle of 
wisdom in. the neighborhood, for he alone of all 
the adults could read, write and cipher ; but he 
is not so now, and never will be again, because 
an educated community is his equal in learning, 
and he now commands only the respect due his 
honorable calling, while he fills that calling hon- 
orably. 

The pre-eminence of the pulpit over the pew 
in point of learning, to say nothing of a kind ol 
superstitious reverence for the place, once gave 
it a factitious authority which, happily, it can 
never have again, while an educated laity rivals 
it in Bible research, and in labors of love and 
self-consecration to the cause of truth. 



* As this page is in the hands of the printer, the Chicago Pres- 
bytery has vindicated the truth of this proposition by sustaining, by 
a large majority, the talented Dr. David Swing, though he has con- 
fessedly departed from the old formulas of the Presbyterian creed. 
The result of that trial is indicative of the larger liberality of modern 
Christianity. 



232 APOSTOLIC PREACHING. 

The spiritual wants of men, when properly 
aroused, will take them to the congregation of 
worshipers that they may obtain that spiritual 
food which can be had nowhere else as it can 
in the sanctuary, in the communion of kindred 
spirits ; but this is often at a great sacrifice, 
when their intelligent convictions are outraged * 
by being compelled to listen to a homily on the 
resurrection of the material body which does 
violence to the teachings of the Bible and to * 
common sense, delivered by some one who has 
not ingenuity enough to eliminate nineteen-twen- 
tieths of the matter before undertaking the task, 
as is now the custom in educated circles, as we 
have seen by quotations from men of learning 
and position. 

We would not have the pulpit turned into a 
platform for scientific lectures. Its one theme 
should be repentance toward God and faith in 
the Lord Jesus Christ. There is no refinement 
in modern society which demands any modifica- 
tion of the style of Paul and Peter when they 
preached Jesus and the resurrection as the hope 
of man, but when, instead of this, the soul 
which is hungering for spiritual food is treated 
to a discourse on the resurrection of the dead, 
which is substantially a repetition of Young's 
"Last Day," the thinking man retires in dis- 
appointment and disgust. The language may 
be somewhat different but the argument is all 
to the point of a literal resurrection of the ma- 
terial body however much that may have been 
scattered, and at the sound of Gabriel's trump 
they say : 

" Now charnels rattle, scattered limbs and all 
The various bones, obsequious to the call, 
Self-moved, advance : the neck perhaps to meet 
The distant head, the distant legs the feet. 



A D YING DOGMA. 233 

Dreadful to view ! See through the dusky sky 
Fragments of bodies in confusion fly, 
To distant regions journeying, there to claim 
Deserted members and complete the frame." 

Is it any wonder that many thinking" men 
have been repelled by such senseless jargon, and 
have been led to doubt human immortality al- 
together, or to embrace only the cheerless, 
Christless notions which are taught at spiritual 
seances, because they are both more Scriptural 
and reasonable than such absurdities? 

It is our profound conviction that very few 
of the thinking men of the age believe in the 
doctrine of the resurrection of the dead, as 
taught in the dark ages, so graphically epitom- 
ized in the extract from Young just given. 
That there are such feeble, yet such learned ef- 
forts to reconcile it to the known laws of God, 
as we have seen, is evidence of this.* 

But these modifiers of the "creed" are very 
much in the dilemma in which Mr. Beecher was 
recently placed by a question. Being asked if 
he believed in the doctrine of the decrees, as 
Calvin taught it, he answered: "I believe in 
the doctrine of the decrees as it is taught in the 
Bible, and as John Calvin would teach it if he 
were alive now, and knew what we know." 
Happy Mr. Beecher! A believer in Calvinism, 
as Calvinism would be with the light of this 
century shining upon the good Calvin ! 

We imagine that these modifiers of the doc- 
trine as it was delivered to the saints a hundred 



*" For a long time we have noticed a gradual departure from the 
clear and definite assertion of the fact and the mode of the resurrec- 
tion of the body as we used to hear it in sermons or read it in theo- 
logical treatises. This change has appeared in the reticence or the 
vagueness of utterance on the subject by the best class of thinkers." 
— Dr. D. Curry i?i Christian Advocate. 



234 BEA UTY OF SPIRITUAL RESURRECTION'. 

or five hundred years ago, if asked, Do you be- 
lieve in the resurrection of the body ? would 
answer : " Yes, as the discoveries of modern sci- 
ence have modified the doctrine; by eliminating- 
all foreign matter and all useless appendages." 

Believing, therefore, that the Christian church 
would be more aggressive at home and abroad, 
and that the consolations of a Christian faith 
would be greater in sickness and in health, 
and its triumphs more marked in death, if that 
gloomy view of the life beyond were wholly 
abandoned, and the faith of Paul and Stephen 
substituted in its stead, we send out this little 
book to do what it may toward the desirable 
end. It goes out with no flourish of trumpets, 
or pretensions to great learning, or with any am- 
bitious expectations that it will suddenly revolu- 
tionize the sentiments of everybody. That it 
will do something* in that direction we are sure. 
Its doctrines, often preached to large congrega- 
tions, have been heard by the common people 
gladly, and many who have not had the boldness 
to declare their convictions in the pulpit have, 
at least, ceased to preach as they once did. 

We may be pardoned for saying that the im- 
mediate occasion for embodying our views in 
this form was the more than ordinary Christian 
strength which such sentiments gave to the dying 
daughter, whose happy death is alluded to in 
Chapter thirteen, with a hope that the perusal of 
these pages may remove the dread of death and 
especially of the grave from many a timid, trust- 
ing one such as she was, as this faith did from her. 

The sentiment of her dying experience was 
not an accident nor a recent revelation. It was 
the fixed and intelligent faith of her life, which 
had been one of peculiar affliction. Among the 



DEA TH ANNIHILA TED. 235 

relics which we prize is her Bible, with the pas- 
sages marked which gave her this belief; and a 
blank-book, with many fugitive pieces of poetry 
to the same purport. We copy the following 
anonymous scrap, not so much for its poetic 
merit, as for the tribute it bears to her taste 
and sentiment, and also, as conveying a doc- 
trine worthy the Christian religion : 

" There is no death ! The stars go down 
To rise upon some fairer shore, 
And, bright in Heaven's jeweled crown, 
They shine forever more. 

" There is no death ! The dust we tread 
.Shall change beneath the summer showers 
To golden grain, or mellow fruit, 
Or rainbow-tinted bowers. 

" The granite rocks disorganize 

To feed the hungry moss they bear, 
The forest leaves drink daily life 
From out the viewless air. 

" There is no death ! The leaves may fall 
The flowers may fade and pass away, 
They only wait through wintry gloom 
The coming of the May. 

"There is no death ! The angel form 
Walks o'er the earth with silent tread ; 
He bears our best loved friends away, 
And then we call them "dead." 

" He leaves our hearts all desolate, 
He plucks our sweetest flowers, 
Transferred to realms of bliss, they now 
Adorn immortal bowers. 

"The bird-like voice, whose joyous tones 
Made glad this scene of sin and strife, 
Sings now in everlasting song 
Amid the tree of life. 

"Born into that undying life, 

They leave us but to come again, 
With joy we welcome them — the same, 
Except in sin and pain." 



236 FREEDOM FROM THE BODY. 

We close with an extract from a late sermon 
by Rev. Henry Ward Beecher. We are aware 
that he is not authority on any theological dog- 
ma among dogmatic theologians. Nothing is 
easier, or more common, than for profound (?) 
preachers to curl the lip and say, with won- 
derful significance: ''Humph! That is just like 
Beecher!" But notwithstanding all that, the 
thinking minds of the country give very respect- 
ful attention to his opinions — indeed, as the 
Chicago Evening Journal said not long since, 
" by his genius, and without any direct effort, 
he has more influence upon the ministerial pro- 
fession than all the theological seminaries com- 
bined." The following is the passage, taken 
from a sermon of 1873, entitled " The Ages to 
Come " : 

" Some believe that this mortal body rises 
again. Thank God, not I! I have had enough 
of it. And when once the earth takes it, the 
earth may keep it. The tree is welcome to 
what it can get of me. Says the apostle : 

" ' There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body.' ' Flesh 
and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God.' 

" Good by, old flesh and blood ! I am bound 
for God's kingdom without you. 

" What it will be to be without them, I can- 
not tell ; but I know it will be magnificent^never 
tiring any more, unwearied and unweariable, 
with nothing to hinder, and everything to help. 
However it may be in the present, ? in the ages 
to come,' over the mountains, across the valleys, 
behind the clouds, beyond all calculable periods, 
there will be a state in which we shall have 
dropped this natural body, and shall be endued 
with our spiritual body, whatever that is, and 



GLORIES OF THE FUTURE 237 

shall be free from the circumscription and weari- 
ness of this mortal condition. We shall be ' Sons 
of God.' Who can tell how he will seem, or 
how he will be, then ? And who can conceive of 
that state in which every eye shall shine on him 
like a star; in which every heart shall impress 
itself on his heart, and make it better, and give 
it an impulse in the right direction, so that 
every being shall imprint on him some glorious 
aspect ; so that every single creature of the 
whole realm, lifted into the highest state, shall 
bring balm and sweetness to every other one ; 
when all hindrances shall be gone, and sorrow- 
ing and sighing shall have passed away, and 
singing shall have taken its place, and God 
shall wipe the tears from every eye— who can 
imagine that? 

" It will transcend any image that you make 
of it. Draw from the heavens; draw from all 
that there is on earth ; draw what you can 
through the channels of inspiration and of rev- 
elation ; collect and cluster together the things 
which men have agreed to consider most ad- 
mirable ; and from these form pictorial parables 
of the City with its golden streets, with its 
gates of pearl, with its walls of precious stones, 
with its beautiful gardens, with its flowing rivers, 
and with its trees whose leaves are for the 
healing of the nations: picture as you may the 
future states from oriental or monarchical con- 
ditions, or from the household and the common- 
wealth as they now exist; from any and all of 
these form your conception of it in any way that 
you please ; but remember that when you have 
made it just as bright as your imagination can 
sketch it, when your fancy, architecturally, has 
wrought as skillfully as it can, and everything 



238 THE AGES TO COME. 

has been carried to the highest pitch that your 
earthly powers will allow, your conception ^will 
yet be imperfect. For the sweet apostle, look- 
ing upon you as a father upon his children, says, 

" ' It doth not yet appear what we shall be.' 

" You have gathered from the cradle purity 
of idea, and clasp and cling of faith; you have 
gathered from rich companionship what is the 
thrill and the joy of the higher life; you have 
gathered from the patriarch and the matron — 
saints not yet gone home to glory — dignity and 
patience, and all that makes generosity and mag- 
nanimity; you have gathered your best fruits, 
and fashioned them into single characters, and 
into ranks, and into communities, and into na- 
tions; and you have combined all these things 
in your conception of the resplendent throne of 
the All- Father. But, saith the sweet apostle 
again, 

" ' It doth not yet appear.' 

" Certainly not, brethren. And if you still 
add nation after nation, and age after age, to 
that conception, it will fall short of what the 
future is to reveal of the goodness of "God 
through the Lord Jesus Christ." 



pi 



